Ross Gerber is progressively becoming disillusioned with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, for whom he used to have an almost poetic level of adoration. In a recent interview on NBC’s Last Call, the Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management CEO & President said that Musk seems to be “blackmailing” Tesla investors into giving him more shares.
The interview addresses Musk’s recent tweet about being “uncomfortable growing Tesla to be a leader in AI & robotics without having ~25% voting control. Enough to be influential, but not so much that I can’t be overturned.”
“I’m very confused by all this,” Gerber said in a separate interview with Yahoo Finance. “His job as CEO is actually to build this AI-robotics Tesla company that he’s being paid already $50 billion to do. So I don’t know. I think this is absurd. Elon’s friends and relatives are on the board of directors of Tesla. Nobody has any influence over Tesla except Elon. And so, I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
Related: Elon Musk Defends His $50 Billion Tesla Pay Package
Musk’s tweet, Gerber believes, is a response to what he said about Tesla not owning the AI chatbot Grok, which is developed by Musk’s xAI.
“So this is about the fact that I tweeted that Grok is not owned by Tesla. And to put Gronk or whatever this thing is called on Tesla is a conflict of interest, and that Tesla should have an LLM model already on their cars. Because if you talk to your Tesla, it’s like worse than Siri,” he told Yahoo Finance.
“The fact that I can already talk to my computer through chat and Microsoft products and have an incredible AI assistant already with Microsoft products, but Tesla hasn’t put anything on the car, I should be able to talk to my Tesla and tell her what to do right now, is a total failure not only in the board and making sure that Tesla is focused on Tesla, but the CEO of Tesla is actually focused on Tesla. So to me, this is really troubling.”
Gerber also highlighted the fallacy that Musk doesn’t already have control of Tesla, saying that Musk, who acquired Twitter, now X, in 2022, isn’t living in the world that the rest of us live in but in X, which “is not the real world.”
“The index funds owns 30% of Tesla. They don’t vote anything. Elon owns 13%. You see what I’m saying? There’s nobody that can take control of Tesla. There’s nobody. You would need hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars of cash to buy the stock. So, the notion that he doesn’t control Tesla– Tesla’s the closest thing to a private company that’s a public company. Okay? It’s not run like regular public companies. Come on.”
Ultimately, Gerber thinks that if Musk wants more Tesla stock, then he should “use his money and buy 3% of Tesla for $25 or $30 billion,” like everyone else. Investors shouldn’t be pressured into giving him the shares “so that he’ll do his actual fiduciary duty to the company.”
Information for this story was found via Yahoo Finance, and the sources and companies mentioned. The author has no securities or affiliations related to the organizations discussed. Not a recommendation to buy or sell. Always do additional research and consult a professional before purchasing a security. The author holds no licenses.
