Musk wants 25% voting control of Tesla despite only owning 12% of company: ‘Unless that is the case, I would prefer to build products outside of Tesla’
Elon Musk warned he would rather build AI products outside of Tesla Inc. if he doesn’t achieve 25% voting control, suggesting the billionaire wants a bigger stake in the world’s most valuable electric vehicle maker.
Musk, Tesla’s single largest shareholder with more than 12% of the company, was responding to a social media post questioning why he would need another large compensation package to stay motivated. He said the reason no new plan has been put in place is because the company is still awaiting a verdict in a shareholder suit against an earlier $55 billion package — an unprecedented amount at the time.
Musk argued in a post on X that the car company is a collection of a dozen startups. He called for a comparison between Tesla and General Motors Corp., traditionally one of the auto industry’s global leaders. Tesla, for example, is developing the Optimus robot, and last month posted a video showing improvements it’s made to the humanoid prototype.
The automaker is also investing more than $1 billion into its Dojo supercomputer project, which will train the machine-learning models behind the EV maker’s self-driving systems and which analysts have estimated could add $500 billion to Tesla’s value.
At Tesla’s inaugural AI Day in 2021, Musk said he wanted to show that the company is more than just an electric carmaker, but is “arguably the leader in real-world AI.”