Elon Musk issues ultimatum to Tesla: give me more shares or AI and robotics development...

[midian182]

What just happened? Elon Musk has given Tesla an ultimatum: increase his ownership in the company to 25% or he will cut back on its development of AI and robotics. The billionaire already owns 13% of the EV giant, or approximately 411 million shares, but it seems he won't be happy unless he's awarded another 12%.

Writing on his own X/Twitter platform, Musk warned that unless his ownership in Tesla increased to 25%, he would be "uncomfortable growing Tesla to be a leader in AI & robotics."

Musk continued his threat by saying that without owning a quarter of Tesla, which he says is enough to be influential but not so much that he can't be overturned, he would prefer to build products outside of the automaker.

"You don't seem to understand that Tesla is not one startup, but a dozen. Simply look at the delta between what Tesla does and GM," he added.

Musk went on to question why large investors in Tesla who own similar stakes as he does, such as Fidelity, "don't show up for work." It's likely that investors already concerned by Tesla's declining profit margins, allegations of Musk's drug use, his duties to other companies, and the CEO's often erratic behavior won't be pleased to read his latest post.

I should note that the Tesla board is great. The reason for no new "compensation plan" is that we are still waiting for a decision in my Delaware compensation case. The trial for that was held in 2022, but a verdict has yet to be made.

I put "compensation plan" in quotes,…

– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 15, 2024

Musk called the Tesla board "great" in a follow-up message, noting that the reason why he had not been awarded a new compensation plan is due to the Tornetta case – a shareholder said the CEO's previous $56 billion compensation was excessive and a breach of fiduciary duty by Musk and members of the board. The case was tried in Delaware last year but a verdict has yet to be reached.

Musk reiterated that 25% is the perfect amount of ownership in Tesla and that he would be fine with a dual-class voting structure similar to the one used by Facebook. However, this would be an illegal restructuring post-IPO.

Musk sold almost $40 billion worth of Tesla shares in 2022, using most of the money to help finance his purchase of Twitter.

Back in 2021, Tesla announced the general-purpose, bi-pedal Tesla Bot during its AI Day conference. A year later, Musk said it was probably Tesla's most important in-development product, potentially bigger than its vehicle business. There was a demo of its latest robot, Optimus Gen 2, last month (above).

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/101541-elon-musk-issues-ultimatum-tesla-increase-share-or.html

 

[Beerfloat]

Dilute everyone else's shares for me or I will prefer to build competing products outside of this company.

... but it seems there are still some people that think he's great.

 

[Anton Longshot]

TESLA: "Elon we'll give you ALL the shares if you promise to share your divinity with us.
JUST KIDDING, please go away. You're a drug-addled liability to the company as many people refuse to buy our cars because of your deplorable antics."

 

[bviktor]

When will this clown be ousted at last?

 

[Farkinell]

At this point I’m wondering whether they’ll just give him the extra 12% to **** off and not hear from again.

 

[mrtraver]

Bye, Felicia.

 

[erickmendes]

I can't help but imagine Musk squarking like Chewbaca asking Tesla for 12% more while swinging he's arms...

 

[GreyOmega]

So the CEO of Tesla is threatening to invest and compete against the company he's CEO of if they don't grant him more control of the company. Sounds like he's already an enemy of the company and likely to sabotage it from his current position within it, as such he should be removed.

 

[PEnnn]

Some famous imbeciles in the US have elevated the art of throwing hissy fits to an amazing level.

 

[wiyosaya]

Some famous imbeciles in the US have elevated the art of throwing hissy fits to an amazing level.

Musk is a hissy fit as well as a Narcissist, and dolt with a vastly over-inflated ego.

Maybe this is somewhat off-topic, but there's a "Tubi Original" on the recent UAP revelations. In the final episode, there's a brief clip of an interview with Musk. The clip shows Musk saying something along the lines of "If UAPs were real, I would know about it because I know some things about space." I could only think "Some presidents have supposedly been denied any knowledge of UAPs and this guy thinks he would know about them because he 'knows things about space'? WTF has this guy been smoking. His ego is about as overinflated as an ego can get."

IMO, Musk is insanity personified, and I bet that this demand about Tesla amounts to grounds for termination of him by the board.

 

[m3tavision]

What is more amazing is the sandy & salty responses here.

The amount of anger, doom and hatred? of Elon, is illustrative of how badly he wounded many of you with Twitter. It also explains why many of the responses are so fragile.

Real simple, it is Elon's Company, he started it.
So Yes..! Elon is actually threatening his own Company too "take it or leave it" type-air to his position.

The Board knows what He means when he says "I have rockets and Ai to build..."


Gr0k got u.

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

The case was tried in Delaware last year but a verdict has yet to be reached.

Last year was 2023, it was actually tried two years ago. The lawsuit itself was filed 6 years ago, and there is no plan to compensate Elon Musk for his position as CEO right now... It seems he hasn't been paid anything to work at Tesla for the last year: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/20/investing/elon-musk-pay/index.html

 

[Kashim]

 

[hover389]

Dilute everyone else's shares for me or I will prefer to build competing products outside of this company.

... but it seems there are still some people that think he's great.

You're right a guy who founded/cofounded and runs some of the most successful companies on earth isnt great lol. Paypal, Open AI and especially Tesla and SpaceX have been enormously successful and industry changing.

 

[Kashim]

Last year was 2023, it was actually tried two years ago. The lawsuit itself was filed 6 years ago, and there is no plan to compensate Elon Musk for his position as CEO right now... It seems he hasn't been paid anything to work at Tesla for the last year: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/20/investing/elon-musk-pay/index.html

Poor guy hasn't been paid anything for the last year, such travesty! He'll be in the poor house soon. Also, no one's forcing him to work for free, it was his choice and can leave any time he wants. Never mind the fact that he already owns 13% of Tesla and it's in his best interest to make the company more valuable so that his shares net him billions more in profits. Forget that, it's better to just demand a huge payout up front regardless of what asinine, ridiculous thing he does/says next. Go capitalism!

 

[bexwhitt]

What is more amazing is the sandy & salty responses here.

The amount of anger, doom and hatred? of Elon, is illustrative of how badly he wounded many of you with Twitter. It also explains why many of the responses are so fragile.

Real simple, it is Elon's Company, he started it.
So Yes..! Elon is actually threatening his own Company too "take it or leave it" type-air to his position.

The Board knows what He means when he says "I have rockets and Ai to build..."


Gr0k got u.

Musky did not start Tesla

 

[brucek]

I'm not a legal scholar and this may be the wrong word, but how is this not some form of illegal extortion? It sounds as if he is threatening that he will use his position as CEO to prevent the most efficient utilization of Tesla's resources. This is a company that is 88% owned by other people, who are now being being threatened with an intentional artificial reduction in value of their investment by the CEO they hired, likely in direct violation of his employment agreement (which of course I haven't seen so I'm speculating, but no one hires a CEO of a public company to intentionally limit shareholder value.)

Immediate termination for cause should be a no brainer. Criminal prosecution might be harder but someone ought to at least be investigating.

 

[McMurdeR]

What is more amazing is the sandy & salty responses here.

The amount of anger, doom and hatred? of Elon, is illustrative of how badly he wounded many of you with Twitter. It also explains why many of the responses are so fragile.

Real simple, it is Elon's Company, he started it.
So Yes..! Elon is actually threatening his own Company too "take it or leave it" type-air to his position.

The Board knows what He means when he says "I have rockets and Ai to build..."


Gr0k got u.

Elon Musk didn't start Tesla, he's the CEO. His influence is significant, but not absolute. He currently owns roughly 1/6th of the company. If you do the math, it might be more correct to state that Tesla owns him.

 

[RudyBob]

If he has what they need then they will

 

[Bluescreendeath]

What is more amazing is the sandy & salty responses here.
The amount of anger, doom and hatred? of Elon, is illustrative of how badly he wounded many of you with Twitter. It also explains why many of the responses are so fragile.
Real simple, it is Elon's Company, he started it.
So Yes..! Elon is actually threatening his own Company too "take it or leave it" type-air to his position.
The Board knows what He means when he says "I have rockets and Ai to build..."
Gr0k got u.

Elon didn't start Tesla. He co-created a finance company called Paypal with Peter Thiel and a few others, and bought Tesla with his Paypal money. Tesla was created by Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard, while Musk later came in with money/investments.

Furthermore, Tesla is a public company, so it's strange that Musk is asking for his shares back. Why did he sell his shares in the first place then? There is no reason to seemingly hold the company hostage by threatening to pull/delay/sabotage the AI or rocket engine company - he could just ask for more shares in his salary and/or renegotiate his contract.

 

[Kashim]

Elon didn't start Tesla. He co-created a finance company called Paypal with Peter Thiel and a few others, and bought Tesla with his Paypal money. Tesla was created by Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard, while Musk later came in with money/investments.

Furthermore, Tesla is a public company, so it's strange that Musk is asking for his shares back. Why did he sell his shares in the first place then? He could just ask for more shares in his salary.

Don't bother explaining anything, you're wasting your time. These people on the right used to despise Musk before he proclaimed he's conservative, and now they absolutely adore him. He can do no wrong (same as a certain orange clown) and if anyone dares to say even one bad word about him the gloves come off. Everyone who dares to criticize Musk in any shape or form is sandy, salty, jealous, etc. It all comes down to Twitter apparently; if you hate Musk then it must be because he bought Twitter. It never occurs to these people that plenty of us never liked Musk, period. It has nothing to do with his political affiliation or what platform he bought. He's a thin skinned, blow-hard, greedy jack-***.

 

[nulll]

I'll keep this short, those who are still living in a near delusional state separated from the real world of the demonstrated and provable accomplishments of everyone's favorite South African Expat need to learn the meaning of the acronym RTFM or GTFO (I literally have a belt buckle kicking around with this stamped into it modeled after that of Norman Mapes).

In 2018 the last compensation statement for Musk was approved by the the board and was described as "insanely difficult to accomplish" by basically everyone in the financial analyst space in the US and beyond. Then he and his teams not only accomplished all of the these insanely difficult never before seen milestones of business growth (1500% sustained growth), product development (model Y, the worlds best selling car and Cybertruck both fell into this time period) and technology advancement (48V architecture becoming a reality through Tesla's sheer force of engineering will not to mention EVERY single manufacturer adopting the NACS charging standard) but they also drove the personal wealth and retirement plans of tens of thousands of their fellow workers and savvy shareholders alike. This last part is absurd yet real as it literally made thousands of entry level Tesla assembly line workers at the Fremont plant and elsewhere millionaires via their stock options built into their pay. For over a year now Musk has been without a compensation statement which means he is effectively working for free! Yes he still has a massive stock holding but so could anyone with the requisite equity and savvy to have purchased the stock. I would point out that all acting CEO's of publicly traded companies are required under sections of at least a dozen SEC guidelines to have a negotiated and publicly disclosed compensation statement. In part this is an attempt to close off yet another attack vector as this has to get done and soon if for no other reason than to placate SEC guidelines.

However, the way Musk has gone about this is just plain weird and speaks to questions about just how much pressure one person can handle no matter how arduous their upbringing and life experience. Make no mistake here kids, what this guy handles before breakfast would break most of the arm chair cynics. Tall poppy syndrome seems to have taken root in the US as of late and that is the last thing that you folks should ever have imported.

https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-announces-new-long-term-performance-award-elon-musk

Or for the academic masochists with a 1500wpm read rate here is the fully unabridged text from the SEC

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000119312518035345/d524719ddef14a.htm

A few folks in the comments above really could stand to read more and comment less. I would truly and genuinely prefer not to have to be so succinct with a few of you but when it comes to combating the modern presentation of opinions as fact the scorpion said it best to the fox "it's in my nature".

 

[brucek]

I'm willing to read more from you Scott. I'm still not sure which parts of which comments you are alleging are untrue as written.

I agree with you that Musk has achieved great accomplishments, and that the lack of defined compensation plan is unusual and against policy. However I'm not sure either point is what's under dispute in the article or comments.

Going just by the TechSpot headline - which of course could differ substantially from the actual full, real events - the issue I see is not that Musk thinks he should be handsomely compensated for his achievements, but the manner in which he is presenting the bill.

A legitimate way to ask for more money: "It is time to update my compensation agreement. In light of what I have done, will do, and the other opportunities I have, my fee to continue as Tesla's CEO is <whatever he wants to ask for, including lots of additional shares>". At that point it would be up to the board to pay the fee for his services, or choose another CEO.

To my mind a very illegitimate way to do it is to say: "I am currently the CEO of public company Tesla and do not plan on relinquishing that position and the control it entails. However, if you do not pay me the additional shares I am now demanding, I will retaliate by purposely not performing that role to the best of my ability, nor allowing Tesla to fully realize its potential, and specifically I will terminate our R&D in AI and Robotics even when there is obvious opportunity there and the investing public expects these efforts to continue."

The first is normal. The second is not, and potentially actionable IMO (although again TechSpot headline != whole story.)

 

[wiyosaya]

I'll keep this short, those who are still living in a near delusional state separated from the real world of the demonstrated and provable accomplishments of everyone's favorite South African Expat need to learn the meaning of the acronym RTFM or GTFO (I literally have a belt buckle kicking around with this stamped into it modeled after that of Norman Mapes).

In 2018 the last compensation statement for Musk was approved by the the board and was described as "insanely difficult to accomplish" by basically everyone in the financial analyst space in the US and beyond. Then he and his teams not only accomplished all of the these insanely difficult never before seen milestones of business growth (1500% sustained growth), product development (model Y, the worlds best selling car and Cybertruck both fell into this time period) and technology advancement (48V architecture becoming a reality through Tesla's sheer force of engineering will not to mention EVERY single manufacturer adopting the NACS charging standard) but they also drove the personal wealth and retirement plans of tens of thousands of their fellow workers and savvy shareholders alike. This last part is absurd yet real as it literally made thousands of entry level Tesla assembly line workers at the Fremont plant and elsewhere millionaires via their stock options built into their pay. For over a year now Musk has been without a compensation statement which means he is effectively working for free! Yes he still has a massive stock holding but so could anyone with the requisite equity and savvy to have purchased the stock. I would point out that all acting CEO's of publicly traded companies are required under sections of at least a dozen SEC guidelines to have a negotiated and publicly disclosed compensation statement. In part this is an attempt to close off yet another attack vector as this has to get done and soon if for no other reason than to placate SEC guidelines.

However, the way Musk has gone about this is just plain weird and speaks to questions about just how much pressure one person can handle no matter how arduous their upbringing and life experience. Make no mistake here kids, what this guy handles before breakfast would break most of the arm chair cynics. Tall poppy syndrome seems to have taken root in the US as of late and that is the last thing that you folks should ever have imported.

https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-announces-new-long-term-performance-award-elon-musk

Or for the academic masochists with a 1500wpm read rate here is the fully unabridged text from the SEC

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000119312518035345/d524719ddef14a.htm

A few folks in the comments above really could stand to read more and comment less. I would truly and genuinely prefer not to have to be so succinct with a few of you but when it comes to combating the modern presentation of opinions as fact the scorpion said it best to the fox "it's in my nature".

Talk about needing to read more and talk less - perhaps you should follow your own advice. For instance, read this https://www.dsf.my/2024/01/volkswagen-outsells-tesla-in-german-ev-market-tough-times-ahead/
I have long said that when the adult automakers bring their EVs to market, Tesla will be in for some very difficult competition. Not to mention that Tesla's are nothing but pure **** IMO! Personally, I've just bought a 2024 Toyota Prius Prime - I could have bought a low-end Tesla for that amount, but Musk would have to pay me to buy one - even then, I'd turn around and sell it.

And to the bean counters that think its Twitter that is behind the animosity towards Musk, I've never had Twitter account, and never will.

 

[ZedRM]

I'm with Elon on this one. The Tesla board needs to remember who their founder and primary shareholder is. This b!tch-slap is exactly what they need to remember what their place is..