Elon Musk hits back at bombshell Tesla leadership report

Tesla shares edged better in early Thursday trading, reversing a pointy overnight decline, after the electric-automobile maker denied a Wall Avenue Journal yarn that immediate it changed into having a glimpse to interchange Chief Govt Elon Musk.

Tesla (TSLA) Chairman Robyn Denholm called the Journal yarn, which talked about that some board contributors had contacted govt-search companies to launch a formal route of to interchange Musk, "completely false," including it had communicated this designate forward of the paper's newsletter.

"The CEO of Tesla is Elon Musk and the Board is extremely confident in his capacity to continue executing on the thrilling development opinion forward," Denholm talked about in an announcement posted on Tesla's knowledgeable X myth.

Musk himself, who has served as Tesla CEO since 2008 and stepped away as chairman in 2018, called the yarn "an extremely bad breach of ethics" that did now not incorporate "an unequivocal denial beforehand by the Tesla board of directors".

Tesla shares possess slumped almost 42% since their mid-December height, shedding around $650 billion in cost alongside the scheme in which, as investors assessed the influence of Musk's feature in President Donald Trump's executive cost-lowering effort on the EV maker's world designate and a chain of disappointing gross sales and provide figures that culminated in last week's 71% first-quarter earnings trot.

The Journal reported that amid that trot, board contributors pressed Musk on his wish to exhaust more time with the neighborhood, a designate he permitted on the time and reiterated to investors in last week's earnings call.

Associated: Tesla Q1 deliveries tumble as Elon Musk's political feature hammers gross sales

"I maintain starting up doubtless subsequent month, May, my time allocation to [the so-called Department of Government Efficiency] will descend enormously," Musk talked about. "I will be allocating doubtless more of my time to Tesla now that the predominant work of organising the Department of Authorities Efficiency is done."

Musk is additionally CEO of SpaceX, which operates the Starlink web provider, as successfully as the X social media platform he purchased in 2022. The South African-born billionaire additionally runs Neuralink, xAI and infrastructure-products and providers supplier Uninteresting Co.

Despite that wide portfolio and his expected effort on cost-lowering for the Trump administration, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives expects Musk to dwell on the Tesla helm for on the very least but another 5 years.

It's far an EXTREMELY BAD BREACH OF ETHICS that the @WSJ would put up a DELIBERATELY FALSE ARTICLE and fail to incorporate an unequivocal denial beforehand by the Tesla board of directors! https://t.co/9xdypLGg3c— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 1, 2025

"We continue to imagine Musk's days on the White Home are in actuality ending after this 'warning shot' from the Tesla Board," Ives talked about.

"This area with Musk at [the Department of Government Efficiency] changed into reaching a verge of collapse, however we imagine that cooler heads possess now prevailed and that the Board is now NOT actively looing to interchange Musk and this 'code red' area is now in the rearview."

Tesla shares were last marked 0.83% better in premarket trading to mark a gap bell impress of $284.25 each and every.

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