Tesla Chair: Musk’s Outside Work ‘Actually Helps Tesla’

At Tesla, a long list of extracurriculars seems to pay off.

Tesla’s chair, Robyn Denholm, appeared on “Bloomberg Talks” on Friday to discuss the new $1 trillion compensation package its board crafted for CEO Elon Musk. The package is meant to motivate Musk to help Tesla hit 12 ambitious “operational milestones,” including taking Tesla’s valuation to $8.5 trillion, selling about 12 million cars in the next decade, and putting a million robotaxis on the road.

Beyond the money, though, Denholm said that Musk’s involvement in other ventures motivates him to deliver for Tesla.

“Actually, having his creative energies in various endeavours that are outside of Tesla actually helps Tesla. I know that sounds perverse, and people don’t really understand that,” Denholm said. “But having worked with him now for 11 years, it actually benefits Tesla with him doing things that are not in the mission of Tesla outside of Tesla, both from a resource perspective, but also from a motivation perspective.”

Outside Tesla, Musk’s endeavors include serving as CEO of aerospace company SpaceX, the CEO of brain-computer interface company Neuralink, the CEO of Grok maker xAI, and playing a major part in running X, alongside managing a nonprofit dedicated to renewable energy called the Musk Foundation.

What’s been less appealing to Tesla’s board, however, is Musk’s involvement in politics. In a proxy statement filed with the SEC, Tesla’s board said it sought “assurances that Musk’s involvement with the political sphere would wind down in a timely manner.”

Denholm added that Musk has the same right to be political as any private citizen, but his days in the administration are behind him.

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“And so from a politics perspective, obviously, we’re in a democracy, so everybody gets to voice their points of view. I think Elon, having served as a special government employee, he obviously completed that activity, and he is back and front and center at the company these days,” she said. “What he does from a personal perspective in terms of his political motivations, et cetera, is up to him.”

Denholm’s stance is more tepid than some of the company’s more outspoken investors and observers — many of whom say Musk needs to rein in his focus or leave.

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, known as one of Tesla’s most bullish observers on Wall Street, said on X in July that Tesla’s board of directors needs to establish some “ground rules” for Musk after he said he would launch a new political party called the America Party.

Ross Gerber, an early Tesla backer, said in April that Musk had gone too far — another executive would be better to helm the company.

“With Tesla, it’s simple. It’s you get another face of Tesla. It could be anybody, any CEO, somebody who’s in the middle, who is a great communicator, who refocuses people on what Tesla really does,” Gerber said, adding that the company needed to take measures to reorient its identity around things other than Musk. “I’ve been saying this for two years. Tesla needs to be Tesla.”

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.