Vivek Ramaswamy’s Strive Just Passed Tesla on the Bitcoin Treasury Leaderboard

Strive Inc. surpassed Tesla to become the tenth largest corporate Bitcoin holder globally on March 11, reaching 13,311 BTC after its latest 179 BTC acquisition while Tesla’s 11,509 BTC balance has sat untouched throughout 2025 and into 2026.

The Flip and How It Happened

Tesla bought its Bitcoin in February 2021, disclosed 43,200 BTC on its balance sheet, sold approximately 75% of it in July 2022, and has not moved the remaining 11,509 BTC since. The position has been static for nearly four years. Strive did not exist as a Bitcoin treasury company four years ago. It crossed Tesla by accumulating aggressively while Tesla held passively, a trajectory that required less time than most observers anticipated.

The single largest acceleration came from the all-stock acquisition of Semler Scientific in early 2026, which added over 5,000 BTC to Strive’s balance sheet in one transaction.

Without that acquisition Strive would still be building toward Tesla’s level rather than past it. The 179 BTC announced March 11 pushed the total to 13,311, enough to clear Tesla’s 11,509 and claim the tenth position on the BitcoinTreasuries.net leaderboard.

The Strategy Behind the Accumulation

Strive operates with a specific framework that distinguishes it from every other company on the top ten list except Strategy. CEO Matt Cole has adopted a Bitcoin Hurdle Rate model that measures performance not in dollar returns but in BTC-per-share growth. The goal is to increase the amount of Bitcoin each share of ASST represents over time, which means the company considers any capital raise that results in BTC-per-share growth as accretive regardless of what Bitcoin’s dollar price does simultaneously.

Funding for Bitcoin purchases comes through two mechanisms. SATA preferred stock pays a 12.75% dividend and has attracted institutional investors who want yield-bearing exposure to Bitcoin treasury infrastructure rather than direct Bitcoin ownership. Secondary equity offerings raise additional capital deployed directly into Bitcoin purchases. The structured finance model creates demand for Strive’s equity instruments from a different investor cohort than those buying spot Bitcoin or ETFs.

The debt inherited from the Semler acquisition created temporary leverage risk that the company has moved quickly to eliminate. As of March 5, Strive had retired approximately 92% of that debt and expects to be fully debt-free by April 2026. Eliminating the debt removes the scenario where a Bitcoin price decline could create financial stress at the corporate level, a risk that has affected overleveraged Bitcoin treasury companies during previous drawdowns.

Where Strive Sits in the Broader Picture

The BitcoinTreasuries leaderboard at $70,349 per Bitcoin shows the concentration at the top of corporate treasury accumulation. Strategy holds 738,731 BTC at rank one, a holding so large it represents more than the next seventeen companies combined. MARA Holdings at 53,822 and Twenty One Capital at 43,514 occupy ranks two and three. Strive’s 13,311 at rank ten sits in a cluster with CleanSpark at 13,363 and Hut 8 at 13,696 where a few hundred BTC separates each position.

Tesla’s 11,509 at rank twelve carries a mNAV of 50.60, reflecting how much premium Coinbase Global’s equity trades at relative to its Bitcoin holdings rather than Tesla specifically. Tesla’s own mNAV is not displayed separately in the visible data. What the table confirms is that a company that bought Bitcoin once in 2021 and never touched it again has now been passed by a company that did not exist in its current form eighteen months ago.

The Bitcoin treasury accumulation race has a new participant in the top ten. It got there faster than Tesla could respond simply by standing still.

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