Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Well, Elon Musk gives now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 1: More than half the satellites in space are owned and
Speaker 1: controlled by one man.
Speaker 3: Well, he's a legitimate, super genius, legitimate.
Speaker 4: He says, He's always voted for Democrats, but this year
Speaker 4: it will be different.
Speaker 5: He'll vote Republican.
Speaker 3: There is a reason the US government is so reliant
Speaker 3: on him. Alon Musk is a scam artist and he's
Speaker 3: done nothing.
Speaker 1: Anything he does, he's fascinating the people.
Speaker 4: Welcome to elan Ink, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
Speaker 4: It's Tuesday, June eleventh. I'm your host, David Popodopolis. We
Speaker 4: are talking Tesla, specifically about the upcoming shareholder meeting to determine,
Speaker 4: among other things, Elon Musk's pay package. It's a controversial
Speaker 4: topic as a Delaware judge throughout his previous fifty six
Speaker 4: billion dollar compensation, and there are people campaigning loudly on
Speaker 4: both sides. We're gonna hear from some of them and
Speaker 4: also consider the current comatose state of Tesla stock. Ultimately,
Speaker 4: the question is how much does this vote matter?
Speaker 3: A lot?
Speaker 4: It turns out to Elon, but probably much less to
Speaker 4: the woman who holds his fate in her hands. Lastly,
Speaker 4: we'll dissect a sudden and explosive feud with not one,
Speaker 4: but two two of Elon's rivals talk about all these things.
Speaker 4: We are joined by our all star panel, Max Chafkin,
Speaker 4: senior writer at Bloomberg Business Week, Colomax Hey, David Hey,
Speaker 4: and Dana hall our Ace Elon Musk reporter Dana Welcome Hey.
Speaker 4: Later on, Esha Day, a senior reporter with the Market's
Speaker 4: team who focuses on evs, will join us to talk
Speaker 4: Tesla stock. But Dana, let's jump right into it. The
Speaker 4: vote on Elon's pay package, among other votes, will happen
Speaker 4: on Thursday, But just remind us of what happened back
Speaker 4: in the courtroom in January and what's occurred in the
Speaker 4: month since.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So, to back up for a little bit, in
Speaker 6: twenty eighteen, shareholders overwhelmingly approve this kind of crazy like
Speaker 6: staggering moonshot pay package that was supposed to incentivize Elon
Speaker 6: Musk to stay focused on Tesla. At the time, everybody
Speaker 6: thought it was crazy, but he hit all of the
Speaker 6: milestones and became the richest man in the world. In
Speaker 6: the process. The problem is that Tesla's board is filled
Speaker 6: with his people, like his brother Kimball and his friends
Speaker 6: and in you know, many critics would say that it's
Speaker 6: a captive board, and a shareholder sued over these issues,
Speaker 6: and litigation went on for years. I flew to Delaware
Speaker 6: to watch Elon Musk and former board member Antonio Gracias
Speaker 6: testify in court, and then in January, the judge in
Speaker 6: Delaware basically came out and sided with the shareholder and said,
Speaker 6: you know, this board is like captive and rife with
Speaker 6: conflicts of interest, and the board really didn't negotiate this
Speaker 6: pay package and this is hugely problematic. So she voided
Speaker 6: the deal. Elon got furious and now to sort of
Speaker 6: remedy all of the faults that she found with the
Speaker 6: twenty eighteen package. Tesla is doing this kind of weird,
Speaker 6: risky novel legal strategy where they're bringing the same package
Speaker 6: before shareholders again six years later, in the hopes that
Speaker 6: like having a revote, will somehow convince the Delaware court
Speaker 6: system that everything is now fine okay.
Speaker 4: And that's where we stand out now, Max and Dee,
Speaker 4: this is a pretty unusual pay package. I feel like
Speaker 4: when you talk about CEOs of big companies here in
Speaker 4: the US, you talk about millions with an M, I
Speaker 4: mean billions with the bee as part of you know,
Speaker 4: bonus included and all that is is almost unheard of.
Speaker 2: Right when you see big numbers like this in the billions,
Speaker 2: it's almost always like a huge amount of stock, which
Speaker 2: is which is what this was.
Speaker 3: This was not a cash compensation.
Speaker 2: This was the board giving him a huge number of
Speaker 2: stock options, which is kind of normal in the world
Speaker 2: of startups, you know, much smaller companies, but is and
Speaker 2: even the kind of structure of this and the upside
Speaker 2: and all that, it would be kind of normal if
Speaker 2: this were a much much smaller company with a few
Speaker 2: venture capital investors.
Speaker 3: Very unusual in this case.
Speaker 2: Of course, Elon has always kind of wanted to run
Speaker 2: Tesla as his as if he were running a private company,
Speaker 2: which you know, creates it creates certain opportunities.
Speaker 4: I mean, he's even said he's flirted recently with the
Speaker 4: idea of taking Keesla private again, right right.
Speaker 2: And he of course we all know he did the
Speaker 2: funding secured thing. He's he's done this multiple times. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, it has it creates certain things that I
Speaker 2: think work really well for Tesla, and we're but we're
Speaker 2: running into a situation where, yeah, it seems like maybe
Speaker 2: there's some fundamental problems with how Elon thinks of himself
Speaker 2: and his role within the company, you know, vis a
Speaker 2: vis the American legal system in the Delaware courts and
Speaker 2: so on.
Speaker 4: All Right, so I want to listen for a second
Speaker 4: to the yes case and the no case, i e.
Speaker 4: Those who are arguing that yes, we the shareholders of
Speaker 4: Tesla should give Elon his pay package, or no we shouldn't.
Speaker 4: We're going to listen to the yes case first, as
Speaker 4: expressed by Ron Baron, who's a big Tesla shareholder, and
Speaker 4: he said this on CNBC the other.
Speaker 7: Day, I think in the next ten years we'll probably
Speaker 7: make four or five times our money again in Tesla.
Speaker 7: So so he's created tremendous wealth for people, and he
Speaker 7: was paid. If his contract is enforced, which I think
Speaker 7: it should be, he's paid fifty six billion dollars. So
Speaker 7: it's like winning the lottery. You know, if you and
Speaker 7: Joe was talking about it before he win the lottery,
Speaker 7: you don't tell someone I'm sorry you won so much money.
Speaker 7: You have to give it.
Speaker 3: I remember think that's the yes case.
Speaker 4: The no case we get from Earl Fronk puppy banning.
Speaker 7: I think the.
Speaker 5: Court rightfully pointed out some significant problems with the initial
Speaker 5: disclosure of the compackage. Also, the court ruling has pointed
Speaker 5: out obvious problems with the general governance of Tesla, which
Speaker 5: would become so profound over time as you watch elon
Speaker 5: by a social media company and tarnish the brand and
Speaker 5: seem to be a part time CEO. This no vote
Speaker 5: is an opportunity for shareholders to speak up about these
Speaker 5: issues and hopefully bring some rational governance back to Tesla.
Speaker 4: Thank you now, Dan, What's up with this frunk puppy name?
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 6: Earl is a fascinating guy. I've known him for a
Speaker 6: long time. He is a big Tesla fan, and he's
Speaker 6: very active on x for really known as Twitter, and
Speaker 6: he's very funny. He's got a great meme game. He's
Speaker 6: been like one of these longtime retail shareholders who is
Speaker 6: very active in the in the Tesla community as it is,
Speaker 6: and the fact that Earl is voting no is significant
Speaker 6: because Tesla has been actively courting retail investors that the
Speaker 6: dynamic here of the before the vote on Thursday is
Speaker 6: that large institutional investors, including mostly pension funds, as well
Speaker 6: as proxy advisors Iss and Glass Lewis, are very much
Speaker 6: against the ratification of the pay package. They're very worried
Speaker 6: about further dilution, and so Tesla is actively courting its
Speaker 6: you know, loyal retail base to vote yes, and Earl
Speaker 6: is kind of like a prime example of one of
Speaker 6: the retail shareholders who is very vocally voting no.
Speaker 4: Right, And so the fronk puppy isn't happy. So but
Speaker 4: that gets at something that I really want to lean
Speaker 4: into for a second here. So we know, Dana that
Speaker 4: last time back in eighteen, the vote was pretty much
Speaker 4: a landslide for Elon right the board.
Speaker 6: Seventy three percent of the vote's cast were for Elon.
Speaker 6: And at the time, you know, Tesla's investor relations department
Speaker 6: did a real vigorous job of kind of selling this
Speaker 6: this you know, unprecedented compensation plan to its largest investors.
Speaker 6: But a lot has changed since twenty eighteen. Tesla is
Speaker 6: now in the S and P five hundred, which means
Speaker 6: that there's more index funds and more passive investing Elon
Speaker 6: bought x or, bought Twitter and renamed it x Elon
Speaker 6: started another company. The stock is tanking, so like it
Speaker 6: is a very different dynamic. The shareholder base has shifted,
Speaker 6: just the whole perception of Elon as a CEO has shifted.
Speaker 6: And to me, what's very funny is that the whole
Speaker 6: point of the twenty eighteen package was to keep Elon
Speaker 6: focused on Tesla. You could argue that that has not worked.
Speaker 4: I would say yeah, I would say not. I think
Speaker 4: he probably founded like three additional companies in the time
Speaker 4: since I mean obviously the stock for the most part
Speaker 4: did quite well until it didn't.
Speaker 3: But just imagine how many companies he would he had.
Speaker 4: You'd have seventy companies right now. Had not give him
Speaker 4: that much.
Speaker 2: You know, the pitch back then, even if you were
Speaker 2: a skeptic, I think was a little if, even if
Speaker 2: you were thinking the way Frank Puppy is thinking, was
Speaker 2: a little easier to swallow because it was sort of like, yes,
Speaker 2: this is an insane amount of money, but he only
Speaker 2: gets it if our market cap goes up like tenfold,
Speaker 2: So like, you know, it's it's sort of like a
Speaker 2: you know, win win. What's what's difficult here is it's
Speaker 2: now backward looking. I mean, the market cap is what
Speaker 2: it is, it's actually slightly it's fallen a little bit,
Speaker 2: you know, of course over the last you know, year
Speaker 2: or so. But it's but but the thing is, it's
Speaker 2: sort of like Tesla's in the position of saying, well,
Speaker 2: we have to honor the deal, and you know, and
Speaker 2: some Tesla shareholders, I think understandably, especially given how much
Speaker 2: how Elon Musk is behaving, especially given all the sort
Speaker 2: of big questions about his focus, are sort of I
Speaker 2: think thinking it'd be nice to get out of it, right.
Speaker 4: I mean, the thing at the time and a teen
Speaker 4: was I'm handing you these options to get you to
Speaker 4: focus and drive the company forward and turn it into
Speaker 4: this enormously valuable company, which he did once that struck down, Okay,
Speaker 4: and now he doesn't have it. Well the sort of
Speaker 4: the max to your point, right, the value now is
Speaker 4: the value? Why do I I don't know, if I'm
Speaker 4: a shareholder, why do I need to give you that
Speaker 4: money for past performance?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 6: I think the idea is that, like the guy does
Speaker 6: need to get paid. I mean, at some point they're
Speaker 6: going to have to figure out how to compensate him
Speaker 6: for his work over the past six years. And that's
Speaker 6: certainly the argument that like Robin Denholm, the chair of
Speaker 6: the Tessel board, and all of the bulls are making
Speaker 6: like a deal is a deal, like pay the man
Speaker 6: like he does need to be compensated in some way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Dan, Actually we have a clip of Robin pitching
Speaker 4: the yes vote, and here it is.
Speaker 8: The Tesler of today is utterly transformed from the Tesler
Speaker 8: it was in twenty eighteen. Thanks in large part to
Speaker 8: Elon's leadyship and vision, we are on the of our
Speaker 8: next great growth waves. You have seen for yourself what
Speaker 8: five years under the leadership of an incentivized Elon can,
Speaker 8: due to the value of your investment, protect that same
Speaker 8: value creation potential for the future.
Speaker 4: Man, that's a very good accent. It almost makes me
Speaker 4: want to vote yes myself. But I wonder, Dana, if
Speaker 4: Elon or perhaps Robin would probably say, hey, no, nobody
Speaker 4: put me up to this. But it seems like internally
Speaker 4: within the company there are a lot of Tesla employees,
Speaker 4: high ranking employees, getting out pushing the yes case. Perhaps
Speaker 4: speaks to a bit of the sense of urgency inside
Speaker 4: team Elon, Oh for sure.
Speaker 6: I mean they have a sense of the vote count, right,
Speaker 6: and they know what percentage of retail investors have voted,
Speaker 6: and they are actively talking to their largest holders and
Speaker 6: they know where they stand. I mean, just over the
Speaker 6: weekend we saw Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund, which is a
Speaker 6: top ten holder, come out and say that they're are no.
Speaker 6: I mean, the way to think about this is, this
Speaker 6: is a political campaign. Is the candidate, his pay package,
Speaker 6: is the platform, and you've got surrogates from the board,
Speaker 6: Ron Barron, Kathy Wood like coming out on CNBC and elsewhere,
Speaker 6: like talking about the s case. So it's like this
Speaker 6: is a campaign with like a lot of surrogates. But
Speaker 6: they wouldn't be running such a hard campaign if they
Speaker 6: had the votes. Like, this is going to be a
Speaker 6: very close vote, and I personally think that it will pass,
Speaker 6: but it's not going to pass by the margin that
Speaker 6: it did in twenty eighteen because it's just a very
Speaker 6: different company.
Speaker 4: Now, it's a different Yeah, it's a different company in
Speaker 4: a different time.
Speaker 3: Okay, Max.
Speaker 4: Now, even if the vote is yes in the end,
Speaker 4: which as Dana is telling us, is the base case here,
Speaker 4: does it actually even matter is it binding here? I mean,
Speaker 4: the reality is the judge doesn't have to take this
Speaker 4: vote into account if she doesn't want to.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: No, Dana is comparing to a political campaign, which I
Speaker 2: think is right in this that like perceptions and spin
Speaker 2: are going to be really important in kind of evaluating
Speaker 2: the result of this thing. But it's more like it's
Speaker 2: not like a presidential general election. It's more like a
Speaker 2: primary in a state that doesn't really matter on its own.
Speaker 3: Like think like the Iowa.
Speaker 2: Caucus, right, the Iowa Caucus doesn't decide the IO any Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: but it isn't It isn't binding in the sense that
Speaker 2: it's not going to decide the election, but it is
Speaker 2: gonna shape what happens next. And I do think here,
Speaker 2: if it passes, it seems like the path is pretty clear. Right,
Speaker 2: They're going to appeel the Delaware Court decision. They're going
Speaker 2: to say, look like, we disclosed all this stuff to
Speaker 2: our shareholders.
Speaker 3: They're still for.
Speaker 4: It, dear Judge.
Speaker 2: Mind now, But if it fails, or if it passes
Speaker 2: very narrowly, I think it's pretty bad. And it's and
Speaker 2: I think it's especially bad if it fails because then
Speaker 2: all of a sudden like I don't know, like they're
Speaker 2: legal strategies out the window. They're gonna be They're gonna
Speaker 2: be kind of back where they started, and I think
Speaker 2: they're gonna have to start to think about renegotiating and
Speaker 2: pay at a lower level, which is gonna send Elon.
Speaker 4: It's gonna send him ballistic. I mean I would think
Speaker 4: that to a certain degree. If it is a no vote,
Speaker 4: given Elon has publicly threatened to take his toys and
Speaker 4: leave Tesla, it would essentially be the shareholders calling his bluff,
Speaker 4: like dude, go, there's the door, and then the question is,
Speaker 4: Dana does he go?
Speaker 6: I think it depends on how much of a narcissistic
Speaker 6: injury a no vote would be to him. Because he
Speaker 6: is still like the largest shareholder in the company. He's
Speaker 6: got thirteen percent. It is hard to imagine him being
Speaker 6: so upset that he would just quit. But he's an unpredictable,
Speaker 6: very emotional person, and you have to kind of wargame
Speaker 6: for every scenario. It's just funny, like an autopileo engineer
Speaker 6: will like be on X saying, oh my Elon's so great,
Speaker 6: I've learned so much from him, and then you hear,
Speaker 6: then Elon will respond like much appreciated. It's like how
Speaker 6: It's like how grassroots is this CA campaign? And then
Speaker 6: on the other side, you know Norway's sovereign wealth fund.
Speaker 6: You know some pension fund trunk puppy. Here's amalgamated back
Speaker 6: frunk pugpy. Another big shareholder is this guy Leo who
Speaker 6: is in Singapore. He's like one of the largest retail shareholders.
Speaker 6: He's absolutely a no. And uh, I think it's just
Speaker 6: going to be super close. I would love to be
Speaker 6: able to figure out the title vote telle. I'm like
Speaker 6: a Senate majority leader. I've got this like whip list
Speaker 6: in my head, Like every day it shifts a little bit,
Speaker 6: and I have to tell you, Like Tesla employees are
Speaker 6: telling me that they're getting phone calls like asking them
Speaker 6: have you voted? And if someone says no, they're like, oh,
Speaker 6: would you want to vote right now? Like they are
Speaker 6: really pushing retail. They're calling people, They're emailing people like
Speaker 6: shareholders have gotten voicemails.
Speaker 3: Why wait wait wait wait wait.
Speaker 4: But so they're calling their own employees who own the
Speaker 4: stock and they're saying, dear sir, have you big brother?
Speaker 4: Oh you haven't, big Brother would like you to vote.
Speaker 6: Now, well, they really want you to vote, I mean,
Speaker 6: and there is a website called vote Tesla com Tesla's
Speaker 6: running ads.
Speaker 2: There's a video on the Tesla website and you know,
Speaker 2: being distributed on social media that we're optimists. The robot
Speaker 2: that Elon Musk has said will be the greatest consumer
Speaker 2: product of all time. You know it's gonna be worth
Speaker 2: many trillions of dollars is also pitching the vote.
Speaker 3: It's talking.
Speaker 2: Oh really, it's talking to you and telling you the
Speaker 2: Tesla shareholder.
Speaker 4: As convincingly as Robin Dennie.
Speaker 2: They're pulling Yeah, they're pulling out all the stops.
Speaker 7: Your vote decides the future of Tesla.
Speaker 1: We made it easy to cast your vote any of
Speaker 1: three ways, online, by QR code, or by phone.
Speaker 4: All right, the the bots pushing me, all right, Dana,
Speaker 4: before we move on. Of course, the pay package isn't
Speaker 4: the only thing being voted on on Thursday. Any other
Speaker 4: highlights that will come up in terms of votes at
Speaker 4: the shareholder meeting.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so there are twelve resolutions. I'm sure that every
Speaker 6: listener of the Elon podcast has carefully read the very
Speaker 6: long single one of them proxy, every single word of
Speaker 6: the proxy. But there's twelve resolutions. I think you know
Speaker 6: at the very beginning we're going to hear so two
Speaker 6: board members are up for reelection, James Murdoch and Kimball Musk,
Speaker 6: Elon's younger brother. That's going to be key to watch.
Speaker 6: There could be like a revolt against those two. And
Speaker 6: then proposal three is you know, moving the company's legal
Speaker 6: headquarters from Delaware to Texas. And then proposal four is
Speaker 6: the pay and then there's other things about like the
Speaker 6: right to unionize. So the pay package is the big one,
Speaker 6: but we've got to pay attention to the other ones
Speaker 6: as well, And we could have a split scenario where
Speaker 6: like maybe shareholders say yes on Texas but no on pay.
Speaker 6: Maybe maybe it's yes on James Murdoch, no on Kimball.
Speaker 6: Like it could go many different ways.
Speaker 4: Okay, all right, So we'll see what the vote is
Speaker 4: on Thursday, and if there's some big shocker, perhaps elon
Speaker 4: Inkle listeners, we will be in your feed that evening
Speaker 4: or the following morning. We're gonna go on to talk
Speaker 4: about Keesslas Stock and to do so, we're bringing in
Speaker 4: Esha Day, Senior Reporter, and the market's team Air Bloomberg. Welcome, Mesha. Hello,
Speaker 4: So the last time you were on, you told us
Speaker 4: in our vast audience that Tesla is a wildly volatile stock,
Speaker 4: perhaps the most vowatile in all of the s and P.
Speaker 4: Five hundred and I am as I look at the
Speaker 4: Bloomberg terminal, I see a stock that is comatosed, flatline,
Speaker 4: boring as hell? What is going on, Esha?
Speaker 1: I like that word boring And who would think of,
Speaker 1: you know, using that word along with Tesla or elon
Speaker 1: Moscow that matter?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 1: But sure, if you look at Tesla shares over the
Speaker 1: past month or so, the stock has been trading between
Speaker 1: a very very tight range about like ten twelve dollars usually,
Speaker 1: and that is not typical of the Tesla stock.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 1: Let's take a look at some of the measures that
Speaker 1: traders usually look at, For example, historical volatility. It's basically
Speaker 1: a measure to kind of get a sense of how
Speaker 1: the stock price has been fluctuating in over a certain
Speaker 1: period of time. So Tesla shares historical volatility over ten
Speaker 1: day period last week, I think last Friday will be
Speaker 1: precise drop to its lowest since October of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: So that tells you that this is a typical of
Speaker 1: Tesla's stock, But at the same time, this is rather
Speaker 1: typical of a stock that is kind of expecting a
Speaker 1: milestone event that could lead to further volatility in the future.
Speaker 1: Whenever I see a stock behaving this way, beat Tesla
Speaker 1: or any other name, what it tells me is that
Speaker 1: investors are moving to the sidelines, and that that is understandable.
Speaker 1: Investors try to move to the sideline and kind of
Speaker 1: hunker down when they think that there will be a
Speaker 1: lot of volatility in the recent time, right.
Speaker 4: So the milestone event, the breakout essentially that they're waiting
Speaker 4: for higher or lower is do we is our sense
Speaker 4: that it's tied to the pay package vote.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. So a lot of the conversation, I
Speaker 1: would say, most of the conversations I've been having with
Speaker 1: investors and market watchers and just like broadly stock watches
Speaker 1: and pundits, it has been that this is a near
Speaker 1: term risk event for the stock, and that really is
Speaker 1: why we're seeing kind of this very little movement in
Speaker 1: the stock in the recent times. But then uncertainty is
Speaker 1: not just about the musk Bee package at this point, right,
Speaker 1: everything about Tesla is kind of shrouded in a lot
Speaker 1: of confusion and uncertain that at this point.
Speaker 4: Just to pause there for a second. So the concern
Speaker 4: again is that because if he wins the vote, I
Speaker 4: suppose maybe the stock whatever ticks up a bit higher.
Speaker 4: But the concern is lo and behold, he loses the vote,
Speaker 4: and as Dana was saying earlier, he potentially gets so
Speaker 4: ticked off he just says, screw you all, I'm maddy
Speaker 4: here he walks, and then all of a sudden, the
Speaker 4: bottom falls out of the stock. No, I just made
Speaker 4: all that up.
Speaker 1: No, it's not supposed to be that big of a
Speaker 1: risk event. People are waiting on the sidelines and trying
Speaker 1: to understand what exactly comes out of this vote. But
Speaker 1: it's expected to be a near term risk event, is
Speaker 1: what everybody's telling me. In the longer term, nobody thinks
Speaker 1: that even if it's a negative vote, Elon Musk is
Speaker 1: going to be ticked off enough that he would completely
Speaker 1: as you said, like, maybe shareholders will call his bluff,
Speaker 1: but it will be a bluff. It will be proven
Speaker 1: to be a bluff. So but then there are other risks.
Speaker 1: This is not the only risk, but Tesla at this point,
Speaker 1: there's also the risk about is this like going to
Speaker 1: be an AI company at all? You know, the entire
Speaker 1: kind of pivot that Musk tried to pull about Tesla
Speaker 1: not being an EV company anymore, it's going to be
Speaker 1: an AI company. That's an uncertainty. There's also the elections
Speaker 1: later this year, and a lot of people are worried
Speaker 1: about what a potential Trump win could mean for electric
Speaker 1: vehicle sales in this country in the at the time.
Speaker 7: And since they're already.
Speaker 4: Slow, they're slowly, they've slowed quite a bit. Now, Max,
Speaker 4: we're talking about a stock that is stabilized, and one
Speaker 4: of the reasons why I wanted to talk about the
Speaker 4: stock is, yeah, this is a rare patch of apps
Speaker 4: tranquility in the stock, but after it absolutely collapsed at
Speaker 4: the beginning of the year.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, Yeah, I mean it's been really bad. I
Speaker 2: think what's calm things down? As Elon Musk said, you know,
Speaker 2: as Esha's hinting at, you know, we're gonna pivot towards robotaxis,
Speaker 2: and everyone's kind of you know, who knows, maybe that
Speaker 2: looks better than I guess a lot of people think
Speaker 2: maybe they lift the curtain or the sheet off of
Speaker 2: the new Robotaxi model in August as as many people expect,
Speaker 2: and it is, it is something that feels more immediate
Speaker 2: than I'd say most people who follow this this technology
Speaker 2: would expect. So like, there's sort of possible upsides, but
Speaker 2: they're all you kind of really have to squint for
Speaker 2: a lot of them. You know, maybe Trump and Elon
Speaker 2: get really close and he gets selected and somehow that
Speaker 2: I mean, the one thing I'll say is people who
Speaker 2: are really worried about Tesla about Elon Musk also tend
Speaker 2: to be people who think that Tesla could do okay
Speaker 2: without him. And I think there's been a there's sort
Speaker 2: of an evolution happening, and this conversation around pay shows
Speaker 2: it where for a long time, I think if you
Speaker 2: pull Tesla investors, they would all say that basically the
Speaker 2: company is worthless, pointless, give up whatever without Elon Musk.
Speaker 2: And I think the fact that some people are voting
Speaker 2: against this and that more people are coming around to
Speaker 2: it suggests that there is a feeling that maybe Tesla
Speaker 2: without Elon Musk is more okay than we realized before.
Speaker 4: Dan in conversations you have with your sources, does a
Speaker 4: post Elon Musk Tesla come up more now than before?
Speaker 6: I mean, Elon Musk has been the CEO of Tesla
Speaker 6: since two thousand and eight. He's like the longest running
Speaker 6: CEO of any car company ever. Like it's just like this,
Speaker 6: it's just been this incredible run. But I do think
Speaker 6: that like there is a scenario where like Tesla just
Speaker 6: becomes a car company and someone else runs it and
Speaker 6: they just make cars and they like forget about all
Speaker 6: this robotaxi stuff. That's kind of hard for me to
Speaker 6: envision because the brand is so intertwined with him and
Speaker 6: always has been.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so esha on that where you have have indeed
Speaker 4: some shareholders, some investors arguing that at this point, as
Speaker 4: improbable as it sounds, Elon is hurting the company in
Speaker 4: the stock more than he's helping it. But you're telling
Speaker 4: us that absolutely positively. If it's a no vote that
Speaker 4: causes these will Elon leave questions the stock tanks, you say, no,
Speaker 4: I no, no, I haven't gotten a single thing, right.
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody's expecting this to be a big
Speaker 1: selling event, And I think I can kind of agree
Speaker 1: with Dan I hear Tesla is still very Tesla is
Speaker 1: still very synonymous with Elon Musk. So people think that
Speaker 1: if Tesla, if Tesla wants to be just an EV company, yes,
Speaker 1: it can probably do without Musk. But if Tesla has
Speaker 1: to justify those insane valuations of its stock, then it
Speaker 1: has to become an AI company, and nobody thinks Tesla
Speaker 1: can really do it without Musk. So the idea is,
Speaker 1: even if the vote is a non it could be
Speaker 1: some weakness in the stock, which has anyway not been
Speaker 1: the most exciting stock in the market for some time now.
Speaker 1: But at any point, especially in August, if there's a
Speaker 1: very exciting unveiling happening of the robotaxi, this can you know,
Speaker 1: sky's the limit?
Speaker 4: Yeah, esha. And perhaps when that exciting unveiling of the
Speaker 4: Robotaxi happens, we'll have you back on when you are that.
Speaker 4: Don't bring us boring again, You're better than that, bring
Speaker 4: us wild surprising news.
Speaker 1: Tell the stock.
Speaker 3: Okay, but thank.
Speaker 4: You for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Okay, Max, I feel like we had no feud last week,
Speaker 4: but we're back with a big time oh man.
Speaker 2: Huge, this is you know, this is a big breaking breaking.
Speaker 2: This is high both on the feud board in terms
Speaker 2: of the ranking of the feud, but also high because
Speaker 2: we're talking about some of the most important executives in
Speaker 2: the business world, some of them powerful people on Earth,
Speaker 2: and they are feuding, which I love. Yesterday, Tim Cook
Speaker 2: and a bunch of Apple executives went through a huge
Speaker 2: sort of developer conference.
Speaker 3: You know, this is one of their regular events.
Speaker 2: It's one of the event where they talk about software updates,
Speaker 2: and it was all about AI. And there were a
Speaker 2: bunch of little things, you know, the iPad. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you knew this, David. The iPad has a
Speaker 2: calculator now. But the sort of most significant announcement was
Speaker 2: that there is going to be an integration with open
Speaker 2: Ai inside of iPhones and I believe eventually, you know,
Speaker 2: other Apple products, so you can essentially ask Siri to
Speaker 2: ask open Ai something. And while this was going on,
Speaker 2: Elon Musk, as he often does, picks up his phone
Speaker 2: and starts sending messages and the nature of the messages
Speaker 2: are Apple is terrible.
Speaker 3: This AI thing is an affront of privacy.
Speaker 2: If if this happens, I will ban Tesla employees from
Speaker 2: bringing their iPhones even proposed a sort of solution. He's
Speaker 2: going to have little Faraday cages, that's a little metal boxes.
Speaker 2: Employees will have to put their iPhones in on the
Speaker 2: way into the office to sort of keep Tesla and
Speaker 2: his other companies pure of this nefarious influence of this
Speaker 2: AI company that he doesn't like.
Speaker 3: And of course this is a this is a.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So it is he's rekindling simultaneously too few Exactly.
Speaker 2: This is Elon Musk versus Tim Cook, which we saw
Speaker 2: playing out during the sort of conversation of advertising on
Speaker 2: X last year, and this is Elon Musk for Sam Altman.
Speaker 2: So essentially Elon Musk, I think, in addition to kind
Speaker 2: of expressing his continued distrust, distaste and so on for
Speaker 2: Open Ai, also kind of, you know, as he does,
Speaker 2: maybe watching a lot of people talking about Apple's new
Speaker 2: calculator and talking about Apples and new AI features and.
Speaker 3: You know, sort of missing the spot.
Speaker 6: Still ranting. This morning he woke up to it. It
Speaker 6: was like, the truth is that handing your data over
Speaker 6: to digital superintelligence that Apple themselves cannot even build or
Speaker 6: understand at the operating system level is insane. So he's
Speaker 6: kind of like It's like this two part thing where
Speaker 6: like I'm worried about your privacy and you should be too,
Speaker 6: but also like Apple can't even build AI on our own. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it's like a feud within a feud. It's like a
Speaker 6: nesting feud.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I think, you know, Elon Musk is probably right to say, hey,
Speaker 2: we should be skeptical of what a giant company says
Speaker 2: about privacy, especially when we're talking about AI. But there
Speaker 2: is some irony, maybe even a little hypocrisy here, given
Speaker 2: that Elon Musk has his own competing AI thing, and
Speaker 2: even amid all these tweets, is threatening to you know,
Speaker 2: form a partnership with Samsung and create.
Speaker 3: His own like a groc phone or something.
Speaker 2: So I'm not sure how much of this is just,
Speaker 2: like I said, competitive, maybe.
Speaker 4: Jealous, a little bit of jealousy, all right, But let's
Speaker 4: break this down though for a second, because it seems
Speaker 4: to be setting up like there's like a two one
Speaker 4: one cage match Altman and Cook versus Elon is essentially
Speaker 4: would just come down to Cook, who I believe is
Speaker 4: pretty fit.
Speaker 2: Cook is fit, but he strikes me as a pretty
Speaker 2: you know, he's like a pretty laid back guy.
Speaker 3: You know, he's very California.
Speaker 2: I don't killer instinct, and of course Musk as we know,
Speaker 2: he's trained on the streets of hard knocks and he
Speaker 2: knows all the judo tricks. We've talked about this at
Speaker 2: length of the podcast, so I'm a.
Speaker 4: Little concerned you could take the two of them out.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 3: The question is are we talking about a tag team
Speaker 3: or a two on one.
Speaker 6: Sam is also younger, but like birthday coming up, they're
Speaker 6: both got a little bit of an age different.
Speaker 4: Yeah, does he have the girth though?
Speaker 8: To man?
Speaker 4: Okay, before we move off the feud, beyond all the
Speaker 4: oddity of it and the surrealness of it, is there
Speaker 4: at the end of the day, anything actually serious about it,
Speaker 4: Like could if he really bans these products from from
Speaker 4: integrating with his own products?
Speaker 3: No, I mean I don't think.
Speaker 2: I don't think he's going to ban iPhones for from
Speaker 2: Tesla headquarters. I do think like the thing that I started,
Speaker 2: because yesterday I was pretty dismissive of this. It just
Speaker 2: looked like a guy with main character syndrome, you know,
Speaker 2: wanting to be the main character. But today there are
Speaker 2: a couple of tweets he was responding to talking about
Speaker 2: the prospect, like I said of a partnership with another
Speaker 2: phone company, a groc phone, and that if I were
Speaker 2: a Tesla shareholder, I would be that would give me
Speaker 2: a little pause, because like if Elon Musk starts a
Speaker 2: phone company that's another you know that or like company
Speaker 2: you know and it just starts to make you think like, okay,
Speaker 2: like maybe he's really serious, Like maybe he really does
Speaker 2: intend to take his AI talents to the handset rather
Speaker 2: than building him in the court.
Speaker 4: Well, you gotta say this, whether the product's any good
Speaker 4: or not, the groc phone sounds pretty damn cool.
Speaker 2: It's just it's so funny that he's like, you can't
Speaker 2: trust open the eye. What we need is a chatbot
Speaker 2: that is cooler and that's gonna, you know, solve all
Speaker 2: our problems.
Speaker 4: Max Dana, thank you very much, Thank you great to
Speaker 4: be here. This episode was produced by Stacy Wong. Naomi
Speaker 4: Shaven and Rayhan Harmans are senior editors. The idea for
Speaker 4: this very show also came from Rayhan Blake Maples handles engineering,
Speaker 4: and we get special editing assistants from Jeff Crocott, Antonio
Speaker 4: Muffarech and Arafat Jalasho Perry. Our supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson.
Speaker 4: The Elon Inc. Theme is written and performed by Taka
Speaker 4: Yasuzawa and Alex Subiira. Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer,
Speaker 4: and Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. I'm
Speaker 4: David Papadoppolis. If you have a minute, rate and review
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Speaker 4: next week.