New York
CNN
—
Elon Musk says he’ll be sticking around as CEO of Tesla for the next few years.
During an interview Tuesday at Bloomberg’s Qatar Economic Forum in Doha, Musk was asked if he was committed to being the leader of Tesla for the next five years, and he responded with a “yes.” When asked in a followup if he had any doubts about that plan, he said “well, I might die.”
Musk, who also runs other companies including SpaceX, has spent a significant amount of time this year working for the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiatives, making investors nervous that he isn’t devoting enough time to Tesla. The automaker’s sales have also plunged 13% in the first three months of this year, the largest drop in deliveries in its history.
But “the only things that matter in long term are autonomy and Optimus,” the company’s planned humanoid robot, which is still in development, Musk said in an interview later Tuesday with CNBC. “Those overwhelmingly dominate the future of financial success of the company.”
Musk said that he was confident that, in five years, robotaxis will be ubiquitous. But Musk has laid out ambitious timelines for robotaxis and self-diriving cars in the past – without meeting his self-declared goals.
“Obviously my predictions on this have been overly optimistic in the past,” he said at an event last year.
At the forum, Musk said his outsized pay package at Tesla, including shares of the car company, was meant to give him control in company votes. A Delaware court previously rejected Tesla’s plan to award Musk a package then worth $56 billion, as the company argued that it was needed to entice Musk to stay focused on the automaker.
“The compensation should match that something incredible was done,” he said. “I’m confident that whatever some activist posing as a judge in Delaware happens to do will not affect the future compensation.”
Musk said that the compensation plan was necessary not for its monetary value, but because he wants to remove the possibility that he could be ousted from the company by an activist investor.
Musk’s recommitment to Tesla comes a few weeks after the Wall Street Journal reported that the electric vehicle company had taken steps to work on a formal process to find a new CEO following the recent problems plaguing the company, notably slumping sales and protests.
However, Musk denied the report, previously posting on X, “It is an EXTREMELY BAD BREACH OF ETHICS that the @WSJ would publish a DELIBERATELY FALSE ARTICLE and fail to include an unequivocal denial beforehand by the Tesla board of directors!”
Tesla’s chair, Robyn Denholm, also said the report was “absolutely false.”
In April, Musk told investors that he would be stepping back from his role running DOGE this month, freeing up more time to run the car company. Tesla’s (TSLA) stock price had tumbled as much as 45% this year, but has rebounded and is only down 10%. The company’s shares jumped 1% in Tuesday trading.
