Special Electrek podcast: Is Elon Musk blackmailing TSLA for $100B, admitting to conflicts of interest?
01:21:25 Share

We are live for this special episode of The Electric Podcast. We're not on our usual 4:00 PM on Friday. This is going to be a one issue podcast. We're not going to review all the news of the week. We're still going to have that later on in the week, so stay tuned for that. But I am Fran Lambert, your host as usual, and I'm joined by Seth Winthrop, publisher extraordinaire, whose idea it was to go live and talk about this because

I think a lot of people don't really understand the magnitude of this, right?

Yeah, I think that's the key here. Also, I'm missing a powder day outside. It's snowing. So this is very special. You know it's special when Seth is not on the slope with fresh powder. So yeah, okay, let's do a quick – while people are still coming in right now, I know we posted the article about the podcast and I linked, of course, my article in there to –

to get a little bit of a primer of the situation. But for those who are not aware of the situation, so everything is about Elon tweeting a single tweet last night when a bunch of follow-up and he went into damage control for a little bit. But the core of it is like a potential conflict, a pretty clear conflict of interest and even a potential breach of fiduciary duty to Tesla shareholders that he admitted to last night basically.

So we reported a bunch of times before about the potential conflict of interest with him starting this new startup, XAI, especially within the context of him repeatedly saying over the last few years and even more in the last few days, really, that Tesla is very much an AI and robotics company. So why would you start an AI startup if you're already the CEO of an AI company? AI slash robotic company is words, not mine.

So let me give you a little bit more context now about what he tweeted and why he tweeted it. So this whole conversation started because of a bunch of Tesla fans over the last few days pushing for Elon to get a new CEO compensation package.

Okay. Which personally, like, you know, a lot of people see me as a critic of Elon Musk. And I think it's fair for him to get a CEO compensation package. His last one was the last trench of his options, stock option were...

achieved a year and a half ago, like a while ago, like he didn't have a stock compensation plan for a while for a good reason, because the last one is still in court right now. Even though it's completed, it's in court because some shareholders thought it was too excessive and they sued Tesla over it. So the decision is still in the hands of a judge right now. And Tesla is not going to put a new one in place until they have that decision, which makes sense.

But still, you had a bunch of Tesla fans, Elon Musk fans, pushing for a new compensation package for Elon. Which in itself, although it's kind of a side point, but it's sort of weird. Even though I'm actually pro it, I think he should get a new compensation plan as CEO. If he stays CEO, that is. But...

I won't be campaigning for the richest men in the world to get a new compensation plan. That shouldn't be anyone's role. If Elon wants a new compensation plan, he can reach out to the board and find it. Any person right now online, I got this girl online, Amy, on Twitter that sent me like,

a whole history of her campaigning for Elon to get a compensation package. I'm like, all right, this is cool, but like you're campaigning for the richest man in the world to get more money. Like, what is this? It doesn't make any sense. But,

Elon actually commented on this effort from Tesla fans because I tried to take the pulse of it a little bit on X. And most people seem to agree that it makes sense for Elon to get a new CEO competition package. There's a big spectrum on what the package should be because the last one was pretty crazy. But the consensus was also that Elon still owns 400 million shares in Tesla worth about $100 billion in

That's a pretty big incentive for the company to do well and keep working on the company. But then Elon responded to that. And that's where things got a little bit weird. So let's read the tweet directly. It's not even showing completely here, but we'll look at the tweet. I'm going to share this tab instead. And then we're going to dive into it. Elon says, for those that are only listening,

I am uncomfortable growing Tesla to be a leader in AI and robotics without having roughly 25% voting control. So the first phrase alone is kind of problematic here because... Very problematic.

The word uncomfortable kind of – it saves him for the first phrase because you could still do the job and be uncomfortable with the job. So that is kind of safe there even though it's kind of weird for him saying I'm uncomfortable doing my job unless you double my stake in the company, which is already worth $100 billion. It would be like a – you would need to give me $100 billion for me to be comfortable doing my job. Okay.

Then he explained the stake as being enough to be influential, but not so much that I can't be overturned. Okay, whatever. Then he says, unless that is the case, so unless he gets 25% of the company, I would prefer to build products outside of Tesla. And the context here is what I just discussed. He's talking about AI products specifically because he's concerned about the control over AI, the influence over AI. And he has...

AI startups, he has the option to build new AI products outside of Tesla. He's basically saying, unless I get 25% voting control, I would build product at XCI rather than Tesla.

You don't seem to understand that Tesla is not one startup, but it doesn't. Simply look at the delta between Tesla does and GM. Okay. That, that, that he said a bunch of time. And then he said, ask for stock ownership himself being enough motivation, fidelity, and other own similar stakes to me. Why don't they show up for work? Well,

That one is just plain stupid even for Elon. Elon is definitely the smartest stupid person in the world. He's proving it times and times again because Fidelity is only – there's millions of stakeholders in Fidelity. Yes, Fidelity owns a bunch of shares, but those shares are then owned by millions of different people through a bunch of different security products. Yes.

Yeah, I don't even know who that part of the tweet is for. Nobody's like, "Whoa, why doesn't Fidelity show up?" I don't even know what that means. Yeah, that would mean everyone that has a RUT account with Fidelity should show up for 50 minutes of work per week at Tesla. It makes no sense. I don't know what he's talking about.

I and many others criticized that tweet heavily, and then he went into damage control and added a bunch of things. But the things are not that relevant. I will still quote his follow-up tweet for transparency, but I should note that the Tesla board is great.

The reason for no new compensation plan is that we're still waiting for the decision in my Delaware compensation case. The trial for that was held in 2022, but the verdict has yet to be made. I put "competition plan" in quotes because from my standpoint, this is primarily about ensuring the right amount of voting influence at Tesla." So this one here is one of the points that the Tesla... That's the only argument that the Elon super fans have been using, that he's not asking for more money, he's asking for more control.

It's just super convenient that the only way for him to get more control is more money. That's pretty convenient. Let's be honest here. I'm not saying that I know what Elon is feeling. Maybe that really is only true purpose.

it's to get more control. But even then, it comes with the money. There's no way around it. People will say, "Oh, maybe a dual class voting shares, but a post IPO, that's pretty much impossible." So he's using that argument about, "Yeah, but if we could do that, that would be great." But you cannot do that. So all you can do is give him another $100 billion worth of Tesla share for him to get to 25% control. So

If I have 25%, it means I am influential and can be overridden if twice as many shareholders vote against me versus for me. Yeah, which is like, it gives you a lot of control at 25%.

At 15% or lower, which is about where he's at right now, the four against ratio to override me makes a takeover by dubious interest too easy. Okay. Maybe like five, six years ago, I would have said, yeah, sure about that. But now, I'm not saying it's impossible to do a hostile takeover of Tesla, but it is hard as hell. You can probably count on one hand the entities in the world that can do that.

um and i don't even know it wouldn't be an easy like things for thing for for them to do either yeah maybe the saudis that's about it yeah the saudis maybe apple if they really wanted to but they would like they wouldn't do that like so it's a weird way to

to frame the situation from Elon that makes him look like this is a very noble goal he's having rather than blackmailing Tesla for $100 billion. I would be fine with a dual class voting structure to achieve, but I'm told it's impossible to achieve post IPO. There's the point right there. But that's at the end. If you didn't give me any cash, just some voting shares, I would be happy with that. It just so happened that you cannot do that. You have to give me $100 billion.

So this is literally what's happening here. So yeah, so that's the situation here. So there's a lot of ways to look at this really. And I would love to have your opinion because you guys were alive right now. You can comment in the comment section on YouTube, Facebook, X, wherever you are. When I first read the tweet last night, I had to do a double take. The first one, the first tweet when he says...

when he says specifically I'm sorry I put the wrong one this doesn't show more on this is the second part here unless that is the case I would prefer to build product outside of Tesla so basically the the facts here are Elon says that Tesla is an AI robotics company Elon started xai an AI startup

XAI recruited from Tesla, which we already reported on is a conflict of interest issue as CEO of Tesla. But it's a pretty vague one. It's like it's super difficult to pin down these things. But then four, Elon says that he would prefer to build AI products at XAI rather than Tesla unless he gets 25% of control over Tesla shares. So...

To me, this is a clear admission that there's a conflict of interest here. Yeah, I mean, as a Tesla shareholder, many people, and you and I are both shareholders, I think you probably own a lot more than me. But it just, I mean, right off the top, he's already saying, you know, he's saying he wants another Tesla.

what, 12% of the company to be given to him as a compensation package. So right off the bat, everybody's share in Tesla, if this were to happen, would drop, you know, some, you know, 15% or something. So, you know, whatever your value is right now, like take off 15%, just, you know, give it to Musk. That already is a big deal. But, you know, the bigger thing, I think that the more obvious thing is that he's saying like,

If you don't do this, I'm going to take all my AI talent and I'm going to move it to my own company. And I'm going to basically, you know, like this whole FSD thing that we've been promising for years, that's not going to happen because I'm going to take all the talent that was supposed to be working on that and move that over to my other company, which is, you know, going to work on AI. And maybe at some point later in the future, you know, I'll, I'll license that to, to my, you know,

you know, Tesla. But in the meantime, Tesla, you know, as the FSD thing becomes less and less likely and, and all the, you know, and Elon threatens to leave and he's not putting his energy into Tesla products, you know, that theoretically would really hurt the Tesla share price. So, you know, he's kind of saying, look, if you don't give me this compensation package, it's just huge, like biggest compensation package in the history of man.

I'm going to tank the Tesla stock price, drain it of AI talent, and you guys are screwed. So you kind of have to give me this plan. I mean, is that what I'm seeing and hearing? I mean, it might be. It's a bit of an extrapolation for sure what you're doing right now. But technically, if...

What he's saying is true, which is like it's truly about fear that if they continue this effort at Tesla with AI and AI is a super potentially dangerous, which is his claim here, and he's the only person that can safely bring it to life.

then yes, if that's really his concern, why would he not do that? That's what he's saying, basically. And the context is important here because the first compensation plan was crazy. It worked basically $90 billion if everything goes well, everything went well. At the time that it was given in 2018, if I'm not mistaken, most people didn't believe that

They were able to make it happen, that Tesla would grow enough to hit all the trenches for Elon's competition plan and he would get all those shares. It was a super ambitious plan. And to his credit, he made it happen. Beautiful, beautiful for Tesla shareholders, beautiful for Elon and everything.

Now, so the fact that it was like the biggest CEO compensation plan of all time, like it got plenty of press, of course, but it wasn't that big of a deal because a lot of people were like, yeah, it's theoretically the biggest CEO compensation plan of all time, but it's not going to be achievable. Now you do like a complete, like the same thing and give Elon $100 billion worth of this shares, right?

And it's actually possible. It's crazy, obviously. Like, it would be, like, insane for a company to do that. But it is possible. Like, Tesla could dilute its stock by $100 billion and give shares to Elon. And it would hurt the stock, like you explained earlier, but it would be feasible. We see, like, Abdi here.

in the comments says, are you saying Elon should work for free? No one is saying that. Like literally no one is saying that. We started the show saying that it's perfectly fine for him to have a CO composition package. It's not fine for him to... Well, you could argue about that. Like asking for specifically like $100 billion, that's weird. But then asking for that and threatening that if you don't do that, well...

I'm pretty uncomfortable pushing Tesla as an AI company, even though I'm saying it should be an AI company. And then saying that I would move AI products from... People have been arguing, is he talking about existing products? Is he talking about new one? It doesn't care. It doesn't matter if it's new products, existing products. I think it would be impossible for him to move existing...

tesla products from tesla to xci so i would assume it's mainly new products new new talent especially geez the wind just went nuts here um i know it's my power walls that just started sorry that was the win uh maybe elon has activated my power wall from tesla to to to drown my uh my voice um no but seriously so where was i with that

oh yeah so if you're saying that if you're threatening that that's a breach of fiduciary duty because it shows that you're not um looking out for your shareholders for the tesla shareholders so that's the main that's the main point here is that elon is admitting that his priority as ceo of tesla is not shareholders uh tesla shareholders it's well if you believe him it's uh the security of

the pot it's controlling the potential danger of ai and that's fakes below above uh tesla shareholders which people are always coming down on me and that are freddie all about the money then and everything like it's not uh you you don't you you don't care about humanity and the ai like i'm not i'm not even telling you whether i i agree or not that ai is a potential danger i'm saying

as a fact that as CEO of Tesla, his job is to look out for Tesla shareholders. And he just admitted that that's not his priority as CEO of Tesla. His priority is to get control over AI or influence, he said, sorry, influence over AI. So

Right there, I think that proves that he is in breach of his fiduciary duty, that he has a conflict of interest as CEO of Tesla and as the man in control of XEI.

Yeah. I mean, that's a big statement, but I don't know how you can arrive at any other conclusion there. He says plain and simple, I don't want to build these at Tesla unless I can control 25% of the company. And if that doesn't happen, then I'm going to build it outside of Tesla. And right there, it's like, okay, you crossed the line. And I don't know. I mean, I know that

Basically, Tesla's board is like a friends and family club. I don't know how I don't know how they can stand up to him ever. So I don't know what's going to happen. But I want to talk about like the institutional investors like Fidelity, you know, which Elon mentioned. What about the other, you know?

big investors. I know, you know, even on the, you know, the Tesla Reddits, which are usually pretty pro-Elon, a lot of the commenters are like, you know, this is where I draw the line or, you know, this can't happen. So, you know, I'm seeing a much...

vaster swath of the Tesla community against this than I normally technically see. Like, hey, we're complaining about Model 3 performance getting a price drop. Pretty much just Model 3 performance people

We're on our side on that one. But on this one, it feels like a large swath of the Tesla community is a little concerned about this. Yeah, because when I first saw it, like I said, I didn't believe that's really what he said. I had to read the tweet several times to make sure. And then I actually posted on my ex-account.

the way I was understanding the tweet. And then I asked, like, am I missing something? Is there a counter-argument? Because I have plenty of Elon fans that follow me and whatnot. And normally, as soon as I say something against Tesla or Elon, they will tell me why I'm wrong, basically. And on this one, like, sometimes I am wrong. I'm perfectly willing to admit that. But this time, like, I read all their tweets, and there was plenty of them that were against me on that and pro-Elon.

But they had no argument whatsoever pro Elon. The only argument they were using is like, like Abid said, do you want Elon to work for free? Like, that's not the point here. Or it's okay for him to ask, to blackmail Tesla for that and to have a conflict of interest because Elon is the smartest person possible to control AI. Okay, like you can believe that it still doesn't make it not a conflict of interest. The issue here is really, and this is going to be like a big one,

Should Elon still be CEO of Tesla after that? Because he proved that the number one thing as CEO of Tesla, he's not doing right now. He doesn't want to do. And he's admitting to that, basically. Unless he gets 25%, which is craziness to start a negotiation like that, basically. Yeah.

You said, asked me several times on this show, do you think Elon should be removed as CEO? Even though I'm seen as a critic of Elon Musk, I always defended him that I believe that he's better for Tesla than not for Tesla, even though I've been open for like a

a transition of like him like doing what he's been saying for years really that ultimately would like not to be ceo of tesla step down as product architect and let someone else manage a day-to-day tesla i i would have welcomed that for a while obviously because especially since the twitter acquisition since i think tesla elon spends a lot less time at tesla over the last two years

And we've confirmed that with, you can track his jet, which obviously he doesn't like. But if you track his jet, he's landing it a lot less often at Tesla location than he used to. But anyway, now if you ask me, I think that's the drop that overflows the glass. What's that saying? The last drop? Yeah.

uh the straw that broke the camel's back yeah the straw level that broke the king's like basically i i think you cannot say that and uh i don't think you can say that as a ceo of a company you know i don't think that's that's appropriate i don't think you you can say that and remain ceo of the company i i i'm not running reasonable though like if

Yeah, actually, because he did seem to be like in pretty big damage control after that. But the damage control appeared to be more about the perception that it's all about the money. And he's like, I would be OK with super voting share. It's not about getting $100 billion and all that and everything. And that's not even my point about that. Whether you believe him on that or not, it doesn't disprove a conflict of interest or not.

So if he comes back and he says, you know what, I can see now how saying that is problematic. It's kind of holding Tesla hostage. It's kind of blackmailing Tesla for money, which if you remember just a few weeks ago, he stood on stage and told people to go F themselves if they blackmail him for money, specifically advertisers on X.

So if he comes out and says, yeah, I can see how what I said is problematic on that front. Look, I'm looking for a new SEO compensation package. I would want one that gives me more control over Tesla AI, but I'm not going to

move any talent from Tesla to XAI. Not going to... I'm going to limit... At the very least, the board should have done that the moment that they knew that Elon was working on an AI startup, obviously. But this should be a clear contract in Elon's CEO, a clear clause in Tesla's CEO contract about...

what they can and can't do at XAI in relation to Tesla. Like XAI cannot compete in any of Tesla's AI product categories. XAI cannot recruit any talent from Tesla. Like all these things should be very obvious because of his... And even then, it would still be problematic, to be honest, because he has a view into Tesla's work, AI work that is...

completely transparent as ceo and then he can bring some of that whenever he wants to xci so it's still problematic but at least there would be some parameters uh on top of that but so like i'm being very generous here like opening the door to something like that because i i i think that the probably the only sane outcome right now would be if the board was not completely in elon's pockets um

They would see that as a clear conflict of interest at the breach of fiduciary duty and they would probably terminate Elon right away. I agree. I have been kind of beating that drum for a little bit, but I think this is the line that it's no longer questionable. I think you have to do something. The board should be doing something as we speak and it doesn't seem like that's happening.

Yeah, I don't see it either. Like replace this exact conversation we just had, replace the word Tesla by Apple or the word Elon by Tim and everyone would be like perfectly okay with Tim having to step down as CEO, being fired or whatever. It's because it's Elon, it's because it's Tesla.

And I'm not taking away anything that Elon did at Tesla to make it that important of a company, accelerating the transition to electric vehicles, to clean energy, all the great ideas he had, all great, everything. You cannot be the CEO of a company

and put your personal interests and or your personal belief in the danger of AI on top of your duty as a CEO to create shareholder value and everything. And he did that.

Yeah. Black on white. I mean, I guess the moment that he created XAI and some engineers already started moving over, I feel like that should have been the line for the board to say, hey, look, you can't do this. You yourself have said publicly that Tesla is an AI and robotics company. If you're creating another company and you're moving people over from Tesla,

you know, a public company that there's a lot of shareholders in to your private company that, you know, you're making most of the money from, that's already a huge conflict of interest. It's already like, you know, the SEC would theoretically see some issues with. It just seems like it's already a big problem to have two entities like that. But the fact that now he's saying publicly on the record, I'm not going to,

I'm not going to help Tesla build AI stuff, even though I've said it's an AI company because I don't have enough, you know, of the leadership control. And I'm going to take it over here. I mean, like I, you know, I was looking at the stock this morning. It's actually up last time I looked. I don't think it means much like at this point, like it's...

Especially like even us saying this, I don't think right now, I don't know who has the, I don't think nothing is going to happen until there is an actual lawsuit filed, which I would be shocked if there's not lawyers working on this right now on behalf of some shareholders.

I think they're going to file a lawsuit against Elon over those comments. I think it's inevitable at this point. You know what's funny about this? What he tweeted last night wouldn't put him in trouble if he had never said that Tesla was an AI and robotics company. Because if you look at the financials, Tesla is very much a car company, an energy company. So it's more about the fact that Elon...

said that it's an AI company, not only he said that, he said that Tesla has no value if it doesn't deliver on AI and on full self-driving, which is based on their AI effort. Right. He said that during an interview with the Tesla owners Silicon Valley group or something like that. He said that multiple times. Right. He said that multiple times. And as recently as two days ago, he tweeted that Tesla is an AI company. So that makes it undeniable that

That he's saying that he won't do his job at Tesla if he doesn't get 25% of control over the shares. But in practicality, it is if he doesn't get $100 billion worth of share from Tesla, which is nuts. Right. And then you mentioned your original post on the matter.

He wouldn't be in this situation with quotes if he hadn't dumped a lot of his Tesla shares to buy Twitter, which is kind of doubly hilarious or weird or frustrating.

Yeah, I mean, he sold tens of billions of dollars worth of Tesla shares to waste it on Twitter. And that's a lot of his fans. Like they got me on that. They were like, oh, Fred, you sure your buy is there? You're saying that he wasted his money on Twitter. I'm not saying that. Elon is saying that. Elon himself said that he grossly overpaid for Twitter. He tried to back out of the

deal, realizing that he was overpaying for it. And then he was forced through the lawsuit to actually go ahead and go through with the $44 billion valuation in the acquisition that forced him to sell extra tens of billions of dollars worth of Tesla shares, which was wasted. Like if he would have paid like the real value of Twitter, he would have not wasted those Tesla shares. So yes, he wasted Tesla shares on this botched

uh, Twitter acquisition and he would have closer to 20%. You know, we wouldn't be talking about that because like I said, since the beginning, I'm not opposed to him getting a CEO compensation plan, even a very generous one in the billions of dollars over a few years, if he, uh, Tesla hits certain, uh, market cap. But, uh,

If he would have still 20% of Tesla share at that point, it would be much more reasonable to get the extra 5% that he – this weird mark of 25% that he thinks gives him a lot of influence, whatnot. That would have been a lot more reasonable when we'd be talking about any of that right now. But he screwed up with Twitter and now it's kind of convenient. Like, all right.

I lost tens of billions of dollars in this. Like, oh, you can still get it back if X like does super well. I'm not saying anything about that. I'm just, right now, this situation regarding Tesla and conveniently, he finds a way to frame things into, I need to get that money that those Tesla shares back for safety, for AI safety. At the core, that's what he's saying. Give me those shares for AI safety. And if you don't,

I'm going to, I have a solution if you don't. I have a solution. I have this AI startup and I'm going to build those AI product at that startup instead of Tesla. That's what he is effectively saying.

And that's plain wrong. I don't see how it's not. Anyway, let's take you guys' comment right now. If you have any comments, you can put it in the comment section. We're going to go through them, see if you guys can change your mind or if you can find other valuable opinion in this. All right. Stennan is pretty vocal in here. As a shareholder, I'd be happy if they focus on expanding car production and actually fulfilling promises of FSD.

but fsd is linked to ai that's the thing right energy is also a relevant area to explore but less buying another solar city and more building mega packs or factories that that's what tesla is doing and that and tesla's going to keep doing that widow without elon he's going to keep building cars with or without elon he's going to keep working on fsd without you know maybe with the more uh conservative approach uh especially when it comes to timelines and all that

80 to 90% of Tesla doesn't belong to him. He can't just pick up all the work done in Tesla so far and planned in the future and move it to XAI or whatever other company has on the side. Yeah, I mean, that's sort of the point is like starting up another company and then moving assets of Tesla into it is taking basically stealing from the company. It's like problematic. Yeah.

So here's the Tesla super or the Elon super fan take. Are you saying Elon should work for free? No. I've never said that.

I don't think anyone should work for free. But there's worse than that. I just tweeted because I look at all the responses to my original tweet that I think it was one of the first ones that really bring this concept of conflict of interest from that tweet forward. And there was almost 200 comments, over 200 comments on both of my posts together. And I looked at everything from the Elon fans.

as a strong argument against the fact that this is a conflict of interest, didn't say anything. But I saw someone tweet out at me, this conclusion that it's a conflict of interest requires one to believe Tesla owns Elon Musk like a master to a slave.

Sorry, I don't think it works this way. As much as we want it to be as shareholders, it just doesn't. First of all, I'm a tester of shareholders. I don't want the CEO to be a slave to the company. Also, I don't see how you can compare the plight of slaves to the most well-compensated CEO of all time. I mean, I've read a lot on slaves. I saw a bunch of movies on slaves. I've never seen a slave receive a compensation plan worth tens of billions of dollars.

Never happened. Yeah, that's not a good look for whoever said that. Yeah, it's Mr. Starman. All right. So, yeah, we're not saying Elon should work for free. No, no one's saying that.

And then he could sell for a normal salary and bonus package, which that's what we're advocating for. If he doesn't want to develop Tesla AI business, which he says is a core part of Tesla value, then maybe he should step down. That's the only reasonable way to look at this, I think. So far, I've not seen someone frame a reasonable argument that is not this. Yep.

convince us otherwise. And he says he can settle for a normal salary bonus package. The only problem with that is like he's standing here is like basically saying that if he does that, then he's fine, I guess, but he's not. Like at this point, because he said that, there would need to be some clear guidelines what's happening with XAI in relation to Tesla. I think they asked him. Yeah, I mean, I don't know that...

XAI can exist in its current form with Tesla. That's my concern, yeah. Yeah. And I also don't think it's a good idea for Tesla to buy XAI or whatever, merge. I mean, I guess that could be a solution, but...

But, you know, what do they pay to get all their old engineers back? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. Well, to be fair, I looked into it a little bit last night as I was looking into this. They did recruit from Tesla, but there's also a lot of other engineers and everything that are working to it. It's just like...

Part of the reason too why he created XAI rather than like go to X or go to Tesla to build this is for recruitment purposes where you can give them stock options that are a lot more attractive as a small startup with a smaller valuation than at Tesla and X. So that's a good way to attract talent. Now, you're right. It could be a solution where Tesla acquires X for shares in Tesla, right?

and that gives shares to Elon, but you cannot justify 12% of Tesla dilution to buy X, obviously, XAI, that doesn't make any sense, the turbo valuation. So you would have to be smarter than that. And then it would already make all those early employees very rich and remove maybe the...

incentive to work at Tesla or under Tesla as a XAI, as a new startup. So there's also problems with that. There might be like a potential solution in there, but I think there's also a lot of problems. All right. Here's another, the Elon fan saying, why not just copy the previous compensation with a $5 trillion market cap? So, you know, theoretically Elon could make all that money back

uh or all those shares back if tesla reaches a five trillion dollar market cap the problem with that is that he already said what he said right he already said what he said he already confirmed that he has a conflict of interest between xai and this so even if you like abd is basically saying tesla should uh bend over and and and give you know what elon requested um which is definitely a solution but

It doesn't solve the conflict of interest problem with XAI that Elon admitted to. So no, I don't think that's a valid solution. Bridge burned. Don't all these existing AI products belong to Tesla? So maybe that's a misconception that XAI and Twitter are part of Tesla. I don't know that a lot of people have that conception, but no, XAI is 100% outside of Tesla.

Yeah, but I mean, I think maybe David is saying that the current Tesla products belong to Tesla. That's true. I don't think they would move the Tesla bot project from Tesla to XCI. But Elon is saying that he wouldn't want to contribute to it. It would be uncomfortable working with it. Do you want a CEO uncomfortable working on your project because he believes that he doesn't have enough control over it, even though he's the damn CEO of the company? It makes no sense. That's the problem here.

Right. And he's saying it's like that he, you know, at 25%, he would have enough control. Influence. Influence, right. That, for some reason, that number is where the amount of influence is the right amount of influence. Yeah. Even though that's not a majority stake. So that's...

Maybe something we should kind of delve into. Yeah. It's pretty convenient that he put this arbitrary number in there that would give him $100 billion more, but in effect would not give him more control because he's already CEO of the company. He already has more influence than everyone.

on those projects. If he can shut down an AI project at Tesla, if he wants, like the board is not doing anything right now when he admits a conflict of interest. They won't do anything if he says, this is too dangerous at Tesla. We're not going to do that. It's madness. Yeah.

All right, David Tolson, how can he remove all these developed products from Tesla? Well, I mean, he can't. And the fear is, though, that he would, you know, his threat is that he would stop doing them at Tesla and start doing them at his own company. Yeah. If Elon goes, Tesla will be dead. I don't think that's the case anymore. I think it could probably do fine without him. Yeah.

Would that be great? Like right now, you can secure, I know I'm maybe too optimistic, but you secure a very good CEO. Maybe you even promote from within. I think someone like Drew Baglino would be great. Maybe you bring back JB Straubel. Maybe you do that. Maybe Tesla buys back Redwood Materials. JB comes in as CEO of Tesla. Yeah.

please that would be that would be awesome like i would double down on my shares if if that happened and then what and then they bring back a pr team and then elon is not the only mouthpiece at the company uh we we get more transparency we get regular transparent updates on vehicle programs on fsd on things like that it's not just all vaporware and promises from elon oh my god

Oh, my job would be so much easier with it. Like I'm turning this about me right now, but how can I not?

all right no it doesn't he's looking out for shareholders by building cars ai and other things are extras well that's one point of view but that's not elon's point of view no he has said numerous times as we said before that tesla is an ai and robotics company and tesla has no value if they don't solve the ai problem of self-driving that's elon's words it's not extra there's no value in tesla tesla is worth zero dollars without it that's what he said

Right. So here's another point of view. If one human can solve general AI, others can and will too. Giving $100 billion to Musk won't stop it. So that's another point. That's a good point.

Yeah. Elon is like, this is Salman that said that. Salman worked closely with Elon, said, I'm going to paraphrase the quote here, but I'm going to be pretty close, I think, that Elon badly wants to save the world, but only if he's the one doing it. So he has this savior complex, really, and he thinks that he's the only one that can bring

AGI to life safely. That's what it does sound like. And I held Elon's intelligence in extremely high regards. I think he's one of the biggest visionary of our time, if not the biggest. But I don't think he's proved that, that he is the only one that can do that safely. If anything, he's proved to be extremely volatile.

I don't think he's like the most rational person in the world, even though he's extremely smart and he can break things down to core principle and make great advancement based on his way of thinking. Those things doesn't necessarily translate to bringing like a digital life form safely to life. Like we don't, no one knows that. Like we...

it's such a big thing it's being a god really like we're talking about who's gonna be the best human to be a god like that's what we're saying like oh i think it's elon like what the hell do you think what the hell do you know like also like you know i i think that he's changed a little bit since the pandemic uh it seems like he you know his values have shifted a little bit from uh you know saving the planet from you know

fossil fuels and, and, and such to kind of becoming a, you know, a, uh, as you say, a God, God figure. Um, so it seems like, uh, I don't know if it's, you know, the wall street journal, uh, article recently about his drug uses is, you know, like a lot, clearly a lot of people around him came forward with like, Hey, he's on all kinds of shit. Um,

Well, he did deny that. I don't know if I trust the Wall Street Journal more than I trust Elon. But to your point, I think what you're describing actually does work with this current approach because what you're describing, I think since the pandemic and since he bought Twitter, his biggest concern is the woke mind virus as he describes it. And it does make sense that if...

Your biggest concern is the birth of AGI, that the woke mind virus, if you do believe that is like a real thing, is a concern because you would think that the AGI could also be infected or be built based on that mind virus. So I get the logic there. I'm not saying I agree with it. I just, I understand the logic with that. Like it's consistent, at least in his madness. Yeah.

All right. Tesla is not an inverted pyramid with Elon on the bottom. Engineers, factories, chargers, assembly workers, and service centers are the core of Tesla. Yes, that I agree with. Tesla has over 150,000 employees at this point. I think it's a well-oiled machine to some degree. There's plenty of issues too, and we keep reporting on that because we're big Tesla haters, obviously. Yeah.

I'm kidding. But yeah, I think Elon is not Tesla. Tesla is not Elon. Right. He can continue working on the language of AI model at XAI. Grok claimed that Elon was a pedophile. So it seems to be based on the collective hive mind that is Twitter. I've not seen that, but I actually use Grok a bit and I don't think it's a bad language model. I'm not saying it's like GPT-4 level quite yet, but it's not that far off.

All right, Matthew Rideout, he won't go back. He has to double down. Yeah, that is another thing with him is he doesn't seem to backtrack. If he makes a mistake, he just runs right through it, I guess. He shouldn't be permanent CEO of any of his companies. He's so smart, he'd do that. If he's so smart, he'd do that, and I think he would do that. I don't know what that means. Yeah. I guess he means that he would leave the company, but I don't know if he would do that.

Do you know of any other examples of the CEO of a company telling the board leaders, give me a larger stake and control or I won't perform my fiduciary responsibilities to our shareholders? I think Elon might be a first. That might be a first given. Oh, man. Tesla dropping is like a sale for retail investors. That's one way to look at it. Yeah.

Piano Yoga Wood says, I think we have a giglomaniac CEO in Elon. I guess that's a new term. Megalomaniac, giglomaniac. Is it possible that he found he had to change the business from less AI and robotics to evolve the company forward but couldn't do it because of pushback? So now this showdown. Yeah, showdown. That's not an unreasonable thing.

I'm sure there's people at Tesla that like to remind Elon that like, hey, day to day the company is only alive because we're selling cars and we're building them for less than we are selling them. That's the only reason that the business is alive. Like, yeah, I know that FSD would be great if it does happen. I know that Tesla bot would be a revolutionary product if it does work. But

The core of the business is that. I don't know how much of a pushback it is. You know what? If I look down to my core, I don't think Elon really wants $100 billion more. I don't think it's going to change a thing in his life. I think he does want more control over Tesla.

He said that before. I'm old enough to remember the take private fiasco of like, what was that, 2017, 2018, whatever. Elon has complained about Tesla being a public company, not having enough control over it before. This is not new. So I can...

I can see Elon really just wanting more control over Tesla. Whether or not it's about AI safety, probably. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt there. It's about that too. Okay, he wants more safety. I just, it just doesn't, I don't think it's justified.

breaking your fiduciary duty as CEO to the fiduciary duty to Tesla shareholders. I don't think that's a valuable one. Again, like other commenters said, EGI is going to happen whether Elon wants it or not, whether Elon controls it or not. Maybe it's even subconsciously using that as an excuse to get control over Tesla. I don't know. I really don't know. Yeah, it's interesting.

All right, we should organize a buyout of his specific shares, allow him the freedom to work, with quotation marks, on all of his other outside interests, robots, hyperloops, accusing cave divers of pedophilia, tunnels, anti-Semitism, Twitter, fighting woke, whatever. Ten shares each, two million people. I'm in. Who's with me? It would be kind of nice to kind of be able to reach outside of that. How about instead, like, the board finds some courage...

And realize that this is a breach of fiduciary duty. Demote Elon from CEO. Start a search for a new CEO. Offers Elon a role as a chief product architect or something like that. Like I would be perfectly fine with that, but he cannot be CEO and look out for Tesla shareholders' interests.

And, yeah, I mean, at the same time, like, yeah, chief product, part-time, like a part-time role at chief product for R&D tech, like two days a week or something. You made it clear. Like it's two days a week and you got to show up to work two days a week. Rest of the time you want to work with your 10 other businesses. That's fine. But a job is a job. All right. Tesla employees have been moving between Tesla and SpaceX forever. Tesla and SpaceX are not competitors. Right. That's enough.

Lucrez, I don't think whatever he said means FSD, which is Tesla AI effort, wouldn't be going ahead. Talent. Talent moving between the FSD program and Tesla AI to XAI is a problem with the development of FSD, period. Yeah, Dan Harreld brings up a good point. Time for Elon to sell all of his Tesla and start his own sandbox. That's what he's asking for. That's a great point. If he doesn't like public companies, then...

Don't take the money. And he keeps taking the money. Even his private buyout of Twitter, he got a lot of other people involved. If he wants to do something himself, then don't take other money. He has full control. It's a good point. Mikey G, it seems to me a reach for control. If he leaves Tesla, then a huge portion of his wealth will vanish, showing he doesn't care about money.

What do you mean? Like if he leaves Tesla, like the stock crashes? I'm not sure about that personally. Yeah, I agree. I don't quite understand. Let's move on here. If they have ex-talented engineers, we'll divert them to work for Tesla or XAI. In Tesla, he only gets 15% benefit. In XAI, he gets 100%.

That's kind of the big idea there. Yeah, that's what he said too. Yeah, he said the quiet part. Yeah. He's so bad at naming things, x.ai. He's a toddler. It's not a bad, not the worst name. It's better than electric. All right. Look at that, it's EV. That was a little good.

Is it really a surprise if he wants somewhat full control of the company? I guess it's not a surprise that he wants full control of the company. It's kind of audacious, though, that he's kind of demanding it or he's going to take the AI stuff with him.

All right. While Tesla is busy monkeying around with Elon, the Chinese are rapidly improving their EV and AI products. Look at BYD. VinFast from Vietnam is coming fast and hard. Wouldn't necessarily put my money on VinFast, but I do think BYD and the Chinese companies are really coming fast. Yeah, definitely.

All right. How could he be working for free? Okay. He has equity. He does well if the company does well. Yeah. But even then, I would still agree to a new CEO compensation plan, a reasonable one, but a new one. It's still normal. CEOs, even though they have big shares, I think maybe Steve Jobs, there was a few years where he didn't take any compensation, I guess, even when the company was doing well. He just...

He has his shares of the company, but he's still got a few big compensation CEO plans. All right. Cathie Wood, ARK investor head, is blowing up Elon's phone right now. And then some sort of monster...

I don't know if that's true. Like, I would really like to be a fly on the wall of the Tesla board right now. I don't, I don't like this. Nothing. You're not really like convening or whatever. Like, I see what they say to each other at this point. And I'm sure there's some sort of communication. If there is, like, I would want, I wouldn't want to know. I guess I,

I have not a strong opinion of Tesla's board over the years. Like, I think they could have reigning Elon Musk a long time ago and a few other things. And so I don't have very little hope about this right now. But if there was ever a moment to do something drastic, like, that would be it, I think.

So here's something I don't think we've talked about. Isn't SpaceX looking to spin out Starlink, like IPO Starlink? Wouldn't that be a big source of money possibly? Yeah. Ilan has talked about it before, but he said, I think he put like some kind of threshold, like when I think they need to be like cashflow positive on Starlink or whatever.

Maybe they already are or something like that. But I think there was some kind of threshold. When this happened, were you going to consider an IPO? I mean, it's a great company to IPO because it's pretty stable in terms of you have your subscribers and it's like any kind of broadband company really. Yeah.

though the infrastructure is obviously a lot less stable, like it's satellites and in orbit rather than the cables in the ground or on poles. But still like it's, it's a pretty like stable business normally. Um,

But yeah, I don't know if he would cash out of that in an IPO or would just let it grow. I don't think he needs money right now. Again, I'm willing to give Elon the benefit of the doubt and say that it's not about money. But I'm not saying it's right, though. Yeah, I mean, it's about assets and control, I would say. Probably control more than anything. Yeah.

But I kind of feel like it's about assets, which is a way of saying money. So maybe I disagree there. All right. So this is more of a why is this not on a space? We use StreamYard, which broadcasts to Twitter using the old thing. So we have, you know, it goes out to YouTube and Facebook and LinkedIn usually and even Instagram. So unfortunately, we can't do spaces. And if the

feed is breaking, then that's probably a Twitter problem or X problem. Rusko says the board has the right to restructure his compensation and he has the right to either take it or leave it. I don't think anybody's arguing that they don't have the right to do that. I just think that his ask to double his share value is a little bit unprecedented would be a fair way to say it. At the core, I think our argument is that

He admitted to a conflict of interest within his ask for a bigger compensation package to get 25% control. So that's our main point. Everything else around it is like we have to assume there are assumptions and all that, whether it's about money, whether it's about control, whether it's really about a concern over AI safety or like all of that. These are all like up for debate.

But our main point is more like he admitted to a conflict of interest about AI development at Tesla versus this XAI startup within his ask for a bigger compensation plan that would give him 25% voting share control.

Right. And there's technically nothing wrong with asking for a huge compensation plan. That's perfectly within anybody's rights, no matter how crazy it is. He could say- It is ballsy. $100 billion, it is ballsy. Yeah. I want $100 billion. Hey, I want $100 billion. There's a lot of people who want $100 billion. Seth, can I get $100 billion? We'll see. We'll see. See how it goes this week. All right.

All right. Gandalf says, this seems overblown, more of an emotional episode for Elon, maybe cooler heads for now, judged by his actions that follow from here. It's too late. Once he admitted the conflict of interest, like Tesla's board right now should be like striving for a solution. Like, all right, we are... As...

The board's fiduciary duty towards the shareholders, the need to protect Tesla's AI asset right now, its AI talent, and Elon just sent them a threat, I'm going after your AI talent and asset because I don't have control over it and I want control over it. He signaled that to the board right now. Yeah, and I mean, frankly, when the day he announced that he was creating XAI, it should have been problematic and they should have, at the very least, set boundaries, which they didn't.

So you need a large investor to initiate some sort of hostile takeover. He's a brilliant man, but he's a lunatic and it's hard to see how he's the future of this company. I don't know. Yeah, we discussed that a little bit earlier, Kevin. Like the concern that there would be some kind of hostile takeover is a fair one, but the chances of happening are fairly small. Like I said, there's probably like five companies or entities in the world that

that would have the the uh the pockets to do that like like like sets and the saudis maybe but even like elon was the one that almost gave the companies to the saudis just right just a few years ago uh and then then you have apple um maybe

maybe microsoft if you did yeah microsoft could too if they really wanted to but i mean they have their own ai effort now with open ai and all that like so uh tesla could refuse to license their tech to ai xai i don't know that's not really how it works not buying anything from them let them stand on their own i mean xai is working more with twitter than they are with

Yeah, I mean, some people thought... One of the arguments that I saw from the Tesla fan trying to defend Elon included the fact that he thought that XAI was part of X because of Grok being distributed to X, but it's a separate company. Yeah, I would say OpenAI... Sorry. XAI. XAI is way closer related to X than it is to Tesla. In fact...

The only thing that XAI and Tesla have in common are engineers moving back and forth between them. Yeah.

But back and forth from Tesla to XI. I haven't seen anyone from XI going to Tesla yet. And not only that, Elon said that XI could use Tesla's data and work that was involved in FSD to create like a real world, get real world data because Tesla's vehicles are in the real world all the time. And same thing for Tesla bots eventually. Yeah.

What would happen to Optimus if Tesla, if Elon left? I think the project would still be a lie. Like I'm sure he was the biggest proponent of the project within Tesla, but now the project is advanced enough to

I don't think Tesla would shut it down. They put Milan Kovac on it, who was one of the most software engineers on Autopilot that contributed the most to Autopilot, one of them, I should say. So now he's in charge of that, so I'm sure he would keep going. All right. Elon's major talent is putting the projects together. Yeah, that's...

Part of it, I guess. Elon implemented several important guiding principles to Tesla, but those are baked into the company now. Elon hasn't introduced any key principles lately. Tesla will be fine without Elon. You know, I think there will be a volatile stock if Elon left. I think it would probably go up and down a lot. But I think in the long run, I agree. I think Tesla would remain good, especially, you know, it depends on who was next.

If it's a JB Straubel kind of character, I think it would do pretty well. If it's some Pepsi CEO, I don't know if that would work out so well. Elon's major talent is selling Elon by claiming other people's work. I don't know about that. He's contributed a ton to Tesla. Maybe the first to admit that. Yeah.

Does anyone know what the holdup is in the compensation plan? If Elon achieved his goals, what's the holdup? We discussed that earlier. There was two big lawsuits that were filed in Delaware regarding Elon's CEO compensation plan and then the board's compensation plan.

The board ended up settling for $735 million that they agreed to return from the board, including Elon, to Tesla for excessive compensation. And then a similar lawsuit, but specifically about Elon 2018 CEO compensation plan, which ran from 2018 to 2021, 2022.

This one, Elon refused to settle. It went to trial and the judge as yet, I think the trial was over a year ago at this point, and the judge has yet to give his judgment on it.

Or hard judgment, I don't know. Yeah, some housekeeping here. Odd that I can't see all the comments. We kind of aggregate all the comments from Facebook, YouTube, X, etc. So you'll only see in the... Yeah, that's why we bring them up on the screen. Because if you're on YouTube, you don't see Facebook comments and vice versa.

Steddon says, I reiterate, he can get a salary and bonus program, then he can buy stocks like the rest of us. Yeah, that's fine. Nobody's saying he should not get a salary and bonus program. The magnitude he's asking for is a little nuts, and the way he asked for it shows a conflict of interest. Elon equals ego. This is a problematic mathematical equation.

I would love it if Tesla would be disassociated from Musk. I'd be more comfortable buying one if that's the case. You know, I'm noticing that more and more people are like, hey, can you recommend an EV that's not a Tesla? I just can't have a Elon mobile. He's the modern day Edison for better or worse, I guess. A few outside the AI community understand the difficulty of the self-driving problem. It is a huge accomplishment keeping the project alive this long.

I mean, a lot of that is the, I wouldn't say empty promises, but keeping it alive means like saying, hey, it's coming at the end of the year. What do you mean by keeping it alive? Everybody wants this. It's just... Yeah. All right. He will see his downfall soon. I hope not. Yeah.

I think he should be removed as CEO of Tesla, but I don't wish him any harm. I don't wish him downfall or anything like that. If anything, I wish that

If he gets removed from Tesla, he brings other awesome products that I love because Elon is behind some of my most beloved products. I have two Powerwalls right there. You don't see them on the screen right now, but right there. I have a Model 3 in my garage. I have my Model S, which is in my parents' garage right now. I used to have a Model X that I love that had over 600,000 miles on it. There's...

Great products from Elon. I just want to see more. Tesla would not be Tesla without Elon. Honestly, even though Elon is not perfect, I'd choose Sam Altman. I think he's a little bit busy right now. Yeah. Retweeting notches all day. I think for Tesla, maybe an Herbert Diaz or something like that would be nice. But I think ideally, I would take probably a Drew Baglino.

which is the SVP of engineering at Tesla right now. And he's been at Tesla for like 12 years or something like that. And he seems very rational. And when he gives his updates on the 4680 cells and all that, it's like, it's what I would like want updates on, like on all the programs that Tesla makes a ton of sense.

If not, like JB, obviously also I'm a huge fan of JB Straubel. And why I would like JB to be CEO of Tesla is probably because it would also come with a deal with Redwood. So maybe a merge with Redwood where Tesla buys Redwood with shares and that would...

give what that would make obviously GB very rich even though he's already a billionaire I would assume but it would also give him like a lot of incentive at Tesla because he would own a lot of shares in Tesla and I think that Redwood and Tesla would work great together

Yeah, and he seems like a more level-headed personality as well. Yes. And also, I think having just a more traditional structure with a COO, people involved. And Tesla has COO-type people. They're just not called the COO.

And it's just so happened, I think that like most of Redwood's PR is old Tesla PR. So we would automatically get a PR team back. Yeah. This is us being selfish because it would make our job a lot easier. All right. That's why Tesla hasn't grown to its full potential over the last decade.

I think this is ridiculous that you're claiming he's on drugs with literally zero proof. I mean, he admitted he's on, I mean, we saw him smoke weed. Not that I think that there's anything wrong with that. And he's admitted he was on ketamine for pharmaceutical reasons. And that popular, like that trendy drug too for like weight loss, like that's also a serious drug too, like Ozempic or something like that. I don't remember. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't think that's... What is a drug? A drug is a drug. I have a problem with that. A drug is a drug. All right. What have I done? Who are you? Where am I? That's an existential question. Yeah. Because I'm not a billionaire and co-founder of Tesla, I have no right to an opinion of whether or not Elon Musk has a conflict of interest within Tesla and XCI. If that's your point, TXS, I...

I think you're not standing on sure footing with that point. All right. One human cannot solve general AI. It is a massive effort. They changed the name Tesla Inc. from Tesla Motors. They won't solve AI self-driving using visible light cameras as the only sensors that will be reliably safe. There's a reason the go-to military sensors are radar, IR, etc. All right. We're getting into a lot of small comments.

here only for fun which car company not tesla is making a humanoid robot honda and asimo isn't that from like 20 years ago yeah all right uh jack with zero sleep i guess that's what one of elon's unspoken concern around takeovers is because he wants the ai to be safe from bad actors that's literally what he said i don't know why you wonder yeah

Yeah, I guess Jack Dorsey trying to be the Jack of all trades didn't work, but I guess – But I mean, no. Let's give some credit to Jack. I mean, Twitter had definitely its issues, but he did a lot of good things at Twitter. And what's his other company that's super successful? Square. Square is like massively successful. Yeah.

So, yeah. They have an interesting relationship, Jack and Elon. I know they obviously, you know, Elon said a lot of stuff, but it doesn't seem like they're quite enemies. Musk has to do with Tesla the better of the company. I think he's absolute poison at this point. I'm driving a Jeep, Jim.

Grand Cherokee 4XE right now is proof. My wife wouldn't buy a car after buying an S&Y from Tesla specifically because of his BS. There's definitely a few people in the same camp as I am here. All right. So we have a lot of comments we're probably not going to get to. We could probably do this. Yeah, I think that just pretty much blew up. But oh, we got a $199 from Cycle Gamer. Yes, there we go. All right. Let's see. I don't even see where that is. Oh, okay.

Thanks for the explanation. I opted for an EV6. Yes, there definitely should have been a clause where he can't take from Tesla to help X. In my view, his biggest strength is making key strategic decisions that might not look good in the short term, but important in the long term. Taking big risks. That's actually a pretty good point. I think that's where Elon has seen a lot of success in his lifetime. But I don't know what that has to do with the current situation. Yeah.

It depends if any new CEO would have the grand scope that Elon has had. If it's just a car company, I don't see it doing more than an extra electric car in the future. The vision is already there. The product roadmap is there. It's mostly about execution at this point, which I'm not saying Elon is not good at execution. Aside from a few programs like FSD, he's been pretty good in my opinion. But

I completely reject this idea that Tesla is doomed without Elon or things like that. I just don't see how that happens. I cannot phantom that. I don't see a scenario where that happens. I can see maybe some volatile stock movement if he steps down as CEO, if he gets fired or whatever it is. But long term, I think it would probably be helpful, really.

It would be less distraction at Tesla. It would make a lot more sense. All right. So let's end with this. Like a publicly admitted conflict of interest should be an immediate end of a CEO position. That's kind of the big takeaway for us is that he crossed the line last night or yesterday, that it's not apparent that he can continue to be the CEO of Tesla.

Yeah. That's kind of the big takeaway here, right? Yeah. Like I've seen a lot like from X, Irvi, Belaryski, just that's quite the disgusting clickbait title on this space. Don't you think? Like I've seen a lot of that, a lot of like frustration from Elon fans, a lot of like,

combating what they see as us being disgusting, whatever. What I've yet to see from all this is a strong argument against the otherwise proven fact that Elon admitted to a clear conflict of interest at Tesla and a breach of his fiduciary duty as CEO towards creating shareholder value. So that...

at the core, that's the issue here. I've yet to see, I asked Elon directly on Twitter about it. Can you explain how this is not a conflict of interest? He hasn't responded. So yeah, at this point in time, I have very little hope of this happening, but in a normal company, I think the board right now would be

Calling Elon, asking him to clarify what he just said. If he cannot explain or walk back his comment in any way, I think, yes, the only outcome would be him to be fired as CEO. I think that's a clear breach of his contract. And then we move on from there.

That's pretty crazy. Like I said, since you asked me a bunch of times, do you think Tesla would be better off without Elon as CEO right now? And most of the time, I'm like, nah, I'm not ready to say that just yet. I think today I'm ready to say that. And I'm a Tesla shareholder. I've been for a long time. And I'm not selling my share just yet. On the contrary, right now, I'm not selling my shares because I kind of have hope. Even if it's a little, like I think it's probably like a 20% chance or something like that.

I have hope that this actually comes out good on the other hand, where Tesla is stronger without Elon or Elon stepping back as CEO, one or the other. Yep. I'm kind of in the same boat. I think Tesla is still an incredibly valuable organization, even with or without Elon, with or without Tesla Optimus bots.

So, you know, I'm in agreement there. It'll be interesting to see what, if anything, the board does if this just kind of gets swept under the rug. And more importantly, like what they do about the compensation package. Like, are they going to give Elon another 10% of the company?

If they bend over on that and the board doesn't do anything about his statement from last night and they just wait for whatever happens with the lawsuit and then just whatever happens, they end up giving him his ass.

that's probably where I would sell my shares then because I would share my share or participate in whatever inevitable lawsuit comes out of this because I think there's a strong case for a lawsuit here against Elon and against Tesla's board if the board doesn't act. I think they all have a fiduciary duty towards Tesla shareholders. And if they don't do anything about the CEO issue,

admitting to a conflict of interest. It is one of the biggest blunder as a board in a major company in a long time, in the long series of blunder in this crazy capitalistic world that we live in.

All right. I think that's it for us. We just went an hour 20 for the special episode of the podcast. We're going to still be on on Friday as we always are, Friday at 4 p.m., and we're most likely going to have an update on this situation if necessary.

hopefully we're gonna have an updated situation and something's gonna move because otherwise that would be very disappointing uh we appreciate every single one of you for for listening to this uh special episode if you do like the the show please give us a like a thumbs up that helps the show a ton and it's free to do only if you enjoy it if you if you hate us which is which is fine you're allowed to hate us i would i would hope that you spend your energy doing something else than hate but

I know it's a very polarizing issue. You can also subscribe, hit the notification button. That you can do even if you hate us. You can hate us and still appreciate our insight or you want to use us as some kind of devil's advocate for your point. That would be actually a healthy thing if you have a pro-Elon bias or whatever. I'm getting very psychological right now. Anyway.

If you're listening to us on your podcast app, you can give us a five-star review. That helps the show a ton. And we appreciate that we read every single one of you that does it. All right. That's it. We're going to see you guys Friday. Have a good one.