The talk of Wall Street and one would presume further afield, is that the Americans ex-pres Donald Trump and their ex-X boss Elon Musk have already talked up a possible advisor gig for the Tesla name stealer, should the presumptive Republican pres-nom reclaim his old gig in Washington in November.
A lot to take in.
The WSJ reports that the once-icy relationship between the two rich, slightly absurd white men has been thawed by a shared hate for not getting stuff they want.
The role hasn’t been fully hammered out and might not happen, people familiar with the love-in told the WSJ, but the x2 crazy rich non-Asians have discussed ways “to give Musk formal input and influence over policies related to border security and the economy.”
As the CEO of several large tech companies, these are obviously areas and issues with which Mr Musk is overly endowed with insight and experience.
However, in his favour, Elon has X-d a lot of contentious stuff about foreigners and money on X, Formerly Twitter, now x-Twitter but open for business.
Musk, the WSJ says has briefed The D on a plan to invest in a data-driven project to prevent voter fraud.
Because that totally happened. Alongside another billionaire with skin in the gaming of Trump, Musk apparently told Trump of “an influence campaign in elite circles that is already under way, in which Musk and his political allies host gatherings of powerful business leaders across the country to try to convince them not to support President Biden’s re-election campaign.”
Exciting!
Elsewhere in Elon’s world, his artificial intelligence company xAI has reportedly closed a US$6bn investment round that’ll easily make it among the richest, fattest ready-to-roll-you challengers to OpenAI and its ubiquitous (but not for long) ChatGPT.
Elon’s latest baby is but a year old, yet the cunning tyke has quickly made its own large language model (LLM), – that’s the basic infrastructure which allows the creation of yummy generative AI which can spit out human-ish words, pics, vid, Scarlet Johannsens and stuff.
The funding round was unsurprisingly among the Himalayas of AI cash splashes and as of Thursday in Sydney, values the xAI at US$18bn before taking into account the $6bn investment, Musk said on X, the social network he owns.
In a blogpost, xAI said the funds from the round will be used to take xAI’s first products to market.
But who couldn’t love that benevolent mission statement?
And there’s some really choice names among the big spending investors:
Finally it’s not plain sailing for Elon and his desperate enforced seperation from his US$55bn Tesla pay package.
In fact the Elon-compliant Tesla Board is facing mounting pushback from shareholders in the wobbly EV maker.
On Wednesday the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (called CalPERS) chief, Marcie Frost, told US news media there’s no way the great big fund would vote for the reinstatement of Musk’s epic remuneration scheme.
Saying the compensation is not that commensurate with Tesla’s ordinary recent performance.
Tesla investors advised to vote against Musk’s ‘excessive’ $56B pay day.
Back in the day, he said: Elon don’t get no salary from tearing the world a new Tesla hole, instead his pay package will be like a game which unlocks new and ever more exciting and challenging levels linked to TSLA growth targets.
The plan, which was valued at $55bn by Bloomers when it was struck down by a Delaware judge in January, was made up of increasingly epic grants of 12 tranches of stock options which go supernova if Tesla hits specific (and fairly wildly ambitious) targets.
Should the company – in the unlikely event – thwack each milestone, Musky gets stocky “equal to 1% of outstanding shares at the time of the grant.”
Tesla has confirmed it hit all of the 12 targets as of last year. Which is pretty amazeballs.
CalPERS is the very fattest of the fat US public pension funds and right up among Tesla’s largest investors with about 9.5mn shares.
They were also unfairly reported to be happy to vote yes for Musk’s stupendous pay package when it was taken to a shareholder vote in 2018.
That wasn’t true, apparently they hated it back then too.
Basically, he’s killed it. so naturally, Musk quickly X-d to make mulch of the CalPERS’ complaints.
“What she’s saying makes no sense, as all the contractual milestones were met. CalPERS is breaking their word,” Musk X-d.
And in the meantime, Elon-compliant Tesla has been pulling out all the stops to promote the proposal.
This week the company began flogging investors the opportunity to tour the Texas gigafactory alongside Musk in exchange for proof they’d voted in Tesla’s annual meeting.
Tesla has also argued the compensation plan is “critical to the future success of Tesla” and has even paid for a handful of advertisements promoting the pay plan.
The annual meeting for investors will take place on June 13.
