Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, expressed his discomfort with growing the company to be a leader in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics unless he has at least 25% voting control of the company.
He said that he would prefer to build products outside of the electric vehicle manufacturer if he does not receive stock in the world’s most valuable automaker. Elon Musk owns around 13% of Tesla stock after selling billions of dollars of shares in 2022. He said he would be fine with a dual-class share structure to achieve his goal of getting 25% voting control, but was told it was impossible after Tesla’s initial public offering.
However, he finds it strange that a multi-class share structure like Meta (Facebook’s parent company) is fine pre-IPO, but even a reasonable dual-class is not allowed post-IPO. Companies with dual-class structures have two or more types of shares with different voting rights. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk currently faces a lawsuit over his compensation package. Tesla shareholder Richard Tornetta sued Musk and the board in 2018 and hopes to prove that Musk used his dominance over Tesla’s board to obtain an outsized compensation package that did not require him to work at the EV maker full-time. Elon Musk said that there was no “feud” with the board over his new compensation package and said that the pending verdict was holding back the discussions.