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Sometimes even the vandals need to be kind.
Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk is giving a group of shareholders an exclusive tour of the Tesla Gigafactory in an effort to rally support for a $56 billion compensation package that was recently struck down by a court.
The bit of political handshake comes ahead of a crucial vote and annual general meeting scheduled for June 13 that is seen as a referendum on his leadership.
But the jockeying over the vote highlights a key tension in the ongoing drama surrounding Musk and Tesla.
Musk has threatened to take major AI projects outside the company if he doesn’t get enough voting power to sway company decisions, but since making that threat earlier this year, he has committed himself to Tesla’s AI strategy, making self-driving technology key to Tesla’s growth and identity.
In Musk’s vision, the company is nothing without self-driving technology, but that also poses the distinct threat that the company is nothing without Musk.
During Tesla’s last earnings call, Musk reiterated, “You have to think of us as an AI robotics company. If you evaluate Tesla just as a car company, that’s the wrong framework.”
This is a classic argument that has played out over the past decade: Domino’s Pizza, for example, argues that it’s a technology company, not a restaurant chain, and with good reason: technology companies tend to command the highest valuations.
A comparison of Tesla’s market capitalization with that of traditional automakers bears this out, as does the enthusiasm and loyalty that drives Musk’s followers: He’s clearly not just selling cars.
But if you believe in Musk’s “beyond cars” theories, you also have to pay for his “excessive” compensation and capitulation to his whims. Preachers demand tithes.
In a recent interview with Yahoo Finance, Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang said he believes Tesla’s full self-driving system, which uses Nvidia chips, is the most advanced system in the field and “far ahead.”
From this perspective, the vote on the compensation package is not just about how many billions Musk is worth, but whether shareholders want to keep him at Tesla – a serious issue for a CEO who runs as many as six companies.
On Sunday, Musk’s AI startup, xAI, announced it had raised $6 billion at a $24 billion valuation. If the Tesla vote goes down and a dejected Musk takes his AI-powered ball and goes home, it’s clear where he’ll go.
But Musk said: He also has a fandom he can rely on.Tesla influencers and reply guys are rallying support for the reinstatement of the pay package. Tesla was a meme stock even before GameStop. About 44% of Tesla’s common stock is held by non-professional shareholders, including individual investors, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. This is the highest percentage of any company in the top 10 of the S&P 500.
“Don’t delay, vote today!” Tesla says on its website, offering the chance to win a tour of Austin with Musk. As the votes are counted, his compensation hangs in the balance. But what he really wants is loyalty.
Hamza Shaaban is a reporter covering markets and economics for Yahoo Finance. Follow Hamza on Twitter. translation:.
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