Photo: CNBC

Billionaire investor Ron Baron said he was not surprised that Tesla acquired Bitcoin, although it will now take him some time to study the matter and express his judgment.

Today, form 10-K for the year ending December 31, 2020, was filed with the SEC. Tesla announced that it has updated its investment policy to give itself more flexibility to further diversify and increase the return on its cash, and has acquired $1.5 billion in Bitcoin cryptocurrency. This caused the price of Bitcoin to skyrocket by several thousand dollars, even reaching over $44,000 at one point.

Longtime Tesla investor Ron Baron told CNBC on Monday that he was not surprised by the company's purchase of Bitcoin. However, he did not make a specific judgment on this, and noted that he wants to further study the decision-making process before doing so. Tesla CEO Elon Musk “has been commenting favorably about bitcoin for a while, so the announcement regarding bitcoin [is] not surprising,” Baron said on “Squawk Box.”

Baron Capital, the company and its funds own more than 6.2 million Tesla shares, valued at $5.3 billion, based on Tesla's closing price of $852.23 per share on Friday. As of mid-December 2020, 39.4% of Baron Partners Fund total investments is in Tesla, and Baron Focused Growth Fund has a 35.9% weighting of Tesla across its portfolio.

“I'm sure a lot of thought went into the bitcoin purchase by Tesla and I look forward to learning the rationale,” Baron said.

He also drew attention to ARK Invest founder and CEO Cathie Wood, who is both a Tesla and Bitcoin supporter. ARK has a target of $7,000 per share, which the firm expects the electric vehicle maker to hit by the end of 2024.

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