While industry watchers are questioning the current surge in Tesla’s stock price as it reaches new highs and surpasses bigger automakers like Nissan, billionaire investor Ron Baron says it’s only the beginning.

Baron, a large investor in the company, sees a path to Tesla becoming a trillion-dollar company within the next 10 years or so.

Over the past three and half years, Baron’s firm has accumulated over 1.6 million shares in Tesla at what the famous investor estimates to be an average price of $208 per share. At the current stock price testing a new all-time-high of $280, the stake is worth close to $450 million.

During an interview on CNBC today, Baron, who is known for his long-term investments, laid out his projected returns on Tesla’s stock over the long-term:

“In 2020, we are going to make from present prices four times our money and I think that in 2025, we could make another triple. And in 2030, it could be another triple.”

Baron highlighted the fact that it’s a long 15-year timeline for a 73-year-old investor, but he estimates the short-time probability of a 4x increase in 2020 as “very high”. While he is less confident in his more long-term predictions, he still sees a potential for a 30x increase from today’s prices by the end of the next decade.

That would value Tesla at over $1 trillion or more than Apple or Google. Tesla CEO Elon Musk also made a similar prediction last year when talking about the potential of the company after the merger with SolarCity.

Baron is also optimistic about the merger with SolarCity because he is a fan of Musk’s vision for packaging electric vehicles, solar arrays, and home battery packs. He sees the expected increase in electricity demand due to electric vehicles to be an opportunity that Tesla is well-positioned to take advantage of.

Of course, we are talking about a large investor talking up a stock here so take it with a grain of salt, but Baron definitely knows a thing or two about company valuation, which makes his comments on the subject especially interesting.

Here’s the interview with Ron Baron from CNBC:

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