Jim Simons' RenTech first bet on Tesla a decade ago - and the fund once held a stake in Elon Musk's automaker worth $12 billion today

• Jim Simons' quant fund, Renaissance Technologies, first bet on Elon Musk's Tesla as early as 2013.
• It bought a split-adjusted 2.7 million shares, worth $19 million then and over $500 million now.
• RenTech's stake peaked at 59 million shares in 2019, worth $12 billion at Tesla's stock price today.

Renaissance Technologies first invested in Tesla a decade ago, and its stake has whipsawed in value from under $400,000 to $1.6 billion since then, a Markets Insider analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission filings shows.