Elon Musk tries to make himself indispensable at Tesla ahead of pay vote
Live MintElon Musk likes to say he doesn’t want to be CEO of Tesla. “Tesla will spend around $10B this year in combined training and inference AI, the latter being primarily in car," Musk tweeted recently. In this case, Tesla faces an EV market contending with increased competition in China and growing popularity of hybrids in the U.S.; the promise of AI technology’s upending business models; and Musk’s own erratic ways—three forces that make it hard to predict where the company is headed. “The EV industry in our view is entering a commoditized dark age, while the AI and robotics industry is entering a renaissance," Jonas, long bullish on Tesla, told investors Thursday. Even before the judge threw his compensation package into disarray, Musk surprised investors earlier this year by saying he didn’t feel comfortable working on AI and robotics at Tesla without having a greater ownership stake—25%.