Category Archives: Elon Musk

Self-proclaimed free speech absolutist and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has promised the company will uphold core socialist values in China following a price war in the countrys electric vehicle market, the Financial Times reported. Tesla was the only foreign carmaker to sign the joint letter pledge with 16 manufacturers at an auto industry conference in Shanghai on Thursday. Failing to comply with core socialist values has been frequently used by authorities to punish speeches that are critical of the Chinese government, a senior China researcher with Human Rights Watch told the Times. Musks own social media platform, Twitter, is banned in the country, and he has been criticized for refraining from tweeting while visiting China. The seemingly at-odds commitment came after Tesla cut Model 3 and Model Y prices to compete with the growing domestic EV industry. In 2018, Musk revealed he was actually a socialist in a tweet, writing true socialism seeks greatest good for all. Tesla declined to comment to the Times on the pledge in China.

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Elon Musk Pledges That Tesla Will Uphold 'Core Socialist Values' in ... - The Daily Beast

Elon Musk has two huge companies to run in addition to Tesla, so the billionaire says he generally spends each day "predominantly" focused on only one of them.

"My days are very long and complicated, as you might imagine," Musk said at The Wall Street Journal's CEO Council last week.

"There's a great deal of context switching," he said, which he described as "quite painful."

Musk said he has just one part-time assistant and handles most of his own scheduling because "it's impossible for someone else to know what the priorities are."

He said he works most of the time he's awake and typically goes to bed at 2 a.m.

In the coming weeks, Musk plans to step down from one of his three CEO jobs after hiring NBCUniversal advertising chief Linda Yaccarino to run Twitter, which he bought last year for $44 billion. When Yaccarino arrives, Musk will become Twitter's executive chairman and technology chief.

Musk said he has made plans for who he wants to eventually take over for him at Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX. Don't expect it to be his 3-year-old son X AE A-XII, who often attends company events, or any of Musk's other eight children, the oldest of whom is 19.

"I am definitely not of the school of automatically giving my kids some share of the companies, even if they have no interest or inclination or ability to manage the company," he said. "I think that's a mistake."

Musk said he's weighing plans for how his ownership stakes in his companies would be handled after his death but hasn't made a final decision. But he has told the companies' boards who he wants to succeed him.

"There are particular individuals identified that I've told the board, 'Look, if something happens to me unexpectedly, this is my recommendation for taking over,'" he said. "So in all cases, the board is aware of who my recommendation is. It's up to them. They may choose to go in a different direction."

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How Elon Musk says he splits time among Tesla, Twitter, SpaceX - Automotive News Europe

Hosting Floridas governor, Ron DeSantis, in a Twitter audio event on Wednesday to announce his presidential run was supposed to be a triumphant moment for Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter.

Instead, the event began with more than 20 minutes of technical glitches, hot mic moments and drowned-out and half-said conversations before the livestream abruptly cut out. Minutes later, the livestream restarted as hundreds of thousands of listeners tried to tune in. Mr. DeSantis had not said a word at that point.

That was insane, sorry, Mr. Musk said.

Behind the stop-start Twitter Space, an audio-only livestream on the social network, was a company that has undergone major changes in recent months. Since Mr. Musk bought Twitter last year for $44 billion, he has reshaped it by cutting more than 75 percent of its work force, changing the platforms speech rules and reinstating suspended users. Outages have been on the rise, as have bugs that have made Twitter less usable.

The technical problems on Wednesday showed how Twitter is operating far from seamlessly, turning what was supposed to be a crowning event for Mr. Musk into something of an embarrassment.

Mr. DeSantiss announcement had been an opportunity for Mr. Musk, an unpredictable executive with interests in many fields, to promote his multiple agendas. Those included a political coming-out for the billionaire, who has flirted with right-wing accounts and politics for years on Twitter but has never embraced a presidential candidate the way he has the Republican governor. And it was supposed to be a way for Mr. Musk to advance his business interests by highlighting Twitter, which he is trying to turn around.

Yet as the Twitter audio livestream faltered, the reaction including on Twitter itself was shock and scorn that what should have been a carefully choreographed announcement of a presidential run had stumbled so badly. The hashtag #Desaster appeared on many posts. Others took potshots at the failure, with President Bidens personal @JoeBiden account tweeting a donation link with the words, This link works.

David Sacks, a tech executive who moderated the audio event with Mr. DeSantis and who is a confidant of Mr. Musks, tried downplaying the technical problems.

We got so many people here that we are kind of melting the servers, which is a good sign, he said during the first livestream, which sputtered out.

Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

Inside Twitter, employees had been alarmed by Mr. Musks turn into politics and whether the social media site could handle the influx of traffic, three employees said. There was no planning for what are known as site reliability issues for the event with Mr. DeSantis, two of the people said, and workers were prepared to do whatever they could to keep the social network running.

When the audio event began at about 6 p.m. Eastern time, more than 600,000 listeners joined, causing Twitters mobile apps and website to sputter or crash, two employees said. Mr. Musk later said that his account, which has 140 million followers and which promoted and launched the livestream, had brought in too many listeners and that Twitters systems had been unable to handle them.

Twitters systems recovered, the employees said, but the restarted livestream with Mr. DeSantis had a smaller audience, with about 275,000 listeners.

Even before the glitches, the event had drawn criticism, especially since Mr. Musk has said Twitter is a politically neutral platform. Michael Santoro, a professor of management and entrepreneurship at Santa Clara University, said the event undermines the claim of impartiality.

As the owner of the company, hes using major resources and power and outreach of the company to express any view, Mr. Santoro said of Mr. Musk.

But others said they were not surprised that Mr. Musk was trying to mold the social platform in his own image and beliefs.

A self-proclaimed moderate, Mr. Musk voted for Democratic presidential candidates like Barack Obama and Mr. Biden. But in recent years he has taken a rightward turn, which has been laid out in full on his Twitter profile. He has posted critically about what he calls the woke mind virus affecting Democratic politics, has shared right-wing conspiracy theories and has repeatedly praised Mr. DeSantis for nearly a year.

Jason Goldman, a former vice president of product at Twitter, compared Mr. Musks moves with Twitter to the creation of an echo chamber where he has put his own interests front and center.

He is the moderator, and the content surfaced and promoted is that which is most pleasing to him, Mr. Goldman said.

In recent months, fears about Twitters reliability have surfaced repeatedly. After Mr. Musk began laying off thousands of its employees last year, many users were so alarmed by the cuts that #RIPTwitter and #GoodbyeTwitter began trending. The company staved off any shutdowns and continued operating, but outages rose.

In February alone, Twitter experienced at least four widespread outages, compared with nine in all of 2022, according to NetBlocks, an organization that tracks internet outages.

The companys technology operations have become more precarious since November, current and former employees have said. Mr. Musk also ended operations at one of Twitters three main data centers, slashed the teams that work on the companys back-end technology such as servers and cloud storage, and eliminated leaders overseeing that area.

On Wednesday after the Twitter Space restarted, Mr. DeSantis finally got the chance to speak. He made his stump speech, then complimented Mr. Musk for buying Twitter. He also praised Mr. Musk, who often declares his support for free speech, for that commitment and said the Twitter owner would surely make money off his investment in the company.

Mr. Musk is a good businessman, Mr. DeSantis said. And Twitter Spaces, he later added, is a great platform.

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Elon Musk's Event With Ron DeSantis Exposes Twitter's Weaknesses - The New York Times

Elon Musk doesnt like people working from home. A year ago he declared the end of remote work for employees at car maker Tesla. Now he has called the desire of the laptop classes to work from home immoral.

Youre gonna work from home and youre gonna make everyone else who made your car come work in the factory? he said in an interview on US news network CNBC:

Its a productivity issue, but its also a moral issue. People should get off their goddamn moral high horse with that work-from-home bullshit. Because theyre asking everyone else to not work from home while they do.

Theres a superficial logic to Musks position. But scrutinise it closer and the argument falls apart. While we have a duty to share workload with others, we have no duty to suffer for no reason. And for most of human history, working from home has been normal. Its the modern factory and office that are the oddities.

Read more: How many days a week in the office are enough? You shouldn't need to ask

Prior to the industrial revolution, which historian date to the mid-1700s to mid-1800s, working from home, or close to home, was commonplace for most of the worlds population. This included skilled manufacturing workers, who typically worked at home or in small workshops nearby.

For the skilled craftsperson, work hours were what we might call flexible. British historian E.P. Thompson records the consternation among the upper class about the notorious irregularity of labour.

Conditions changed with the rapid growth and concentration of machines in the industrial revolution. These changes began in England, which also saw the most protracted and tense conflicts over the new work hours and discipline factory owners and managers demanded.

Judgements of conditions for workers prior to industrialisation vary. Thompsons masterpiece study The Making of the English Working Class (published in 1963) recounts bleak tales of families of six or eight woolcombers, huddled working around a charcoal stove, their workshop also the bedroom.

But it also mentions the stocking maker with peas and beans in his snug garden, and a good barrel of humming ale, and the linen-weaving quarter of Belfast, with their whitewashed houses, and little flower gardens.

Either way, working from home is not a novel invention of the laptop classes. Only with the industrial revolution were workers required under one roof and for fixed hours.

Read more: Meet the matchstick women the hidden victims of the industrial revolution

Musks moral argument against working from home says that because not all workers can do it, no workers should expect it.

This has some resemblance to the categorical imperative articulated by 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

But acting according to the same principle does not mean we all have the same options. We can, for example, want all workers to have the maximum freedom their tasks allow.

The wider error Musk appears to be making is misapplying what ethics researchers call distributive justice.

Simply put, distributive justice concerns how we share benefits and harms. As the philosopher John Rawls explains in his book Justice as Fairness, in distributive justice we view society as a cooperative activity, where we regulate the division of advantages that arises from social cooperation over time.

Research on distributive justice at work typically concerns how to pay workers fairly and also share the suffering or toil work requires. But there is no compelling moral case to share the needless suffering that work creates.

Clearly, professionals benefit from work in many ways we might argue are unjust. As economist John Kenneth Galbraith observed satirically in The Economics of Innocent Fraud, those who most enjoy their work are generally the best paid. This is accepted. Low wage scales are for those in repetitive, tedious, painful toil.

If Musk wanted to share either the pay or toil at Tesla more equally, he has the means to do something about it. He could pay his factory workers more, for example, instead of taking a pay package likely to pay him US$56 billion in 2028. (This depends on Teslas market capitalisation being 12 times what it was in 2018; its now about 10 times.)

To share the toil of work more fairly, he wouldnt just be sleeping at work. Hed be on the production line, or down a mine in central Africa, dragging out the cobalt electric vehicle batteries need, for a few dollars a day.

Instead, Musks idea of fairness is about creating unnecessary work, shaming workers who dont need to be in the office to commute regardless. There is no compelling moral reason for this in the main Western ethics traditions.

The fruits and burdens of work should be distributed fairly, but unnecessary work helps no one. Commuting is the least pleasurable, and most negative, time of a workers day, studies show. Insisting everyone has to do it brings no benefit to those who must do it. Theyre not better off.

Denying some workers freedom to work from home because other workers dont have the same freedom now is ethically perverse.

Musks hostility towards remote work is consistent with a long history of research that documents managers resistance to letting workers out of their sight.

Working from home, or anywhere working, has been discussed since the 1970s, and technologically viable since at least the late 1990s. Yet it only became an option for most workers when managers were forced to accept it during the pandemic.

While this enforced experiment of the pandemic has led to the epiphany that working from home can be as productive, the growth of surveillance systems to track workers at home proves managerial suspicions linger.

Read more: 3 ways 'bossware' surveillance technology is turning back the management clock

There are genuine moral issues for Musk to grapple with at Tesla. He could use his fortune and influence to do something about issues such as modern slavery in supply chains, or the inequity of executive pay.

Instead, hes vexed about working from home. To make work at Tesla genuinely more just, Musks moral effort would better be directed towards fairly distributing Teslas profit, and mitigating the suffering and toil that industrial production systems already create.

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Working from home immoral? A lesson in ethics, and history, for ... - The Conversation

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman credits Elon Musk with teaching him the importance of deep tech investing. But he has no interest in living on Mars - Fortune

Win McNamee

A new wave of investor optimism seems to be pushing Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock higher in the aftermath of its shareholder meeting (held on 16th May 2023), wherein CEO Elon Musk highlighted Tesla's long-term business prospects in emerging areas such as autonomous driving [FSD] and robotics [Optimus].

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In late-2022/early-2023, I was incredibly bullish on Tesla in the mid to low $100s, at a time when Mr. Market was selling it off like a drunken psycho on a daily basis. After having accumulated Tesla for several months in the mid to low $100s, we sold half of our Tesla position at ~$194 a few weeks ago as the wild rally in TSLA took a pause at a key technical level at ~$200-215.

While market participants are clearly getting excited about Tesla once again, I am sticking to a "Neutral" rating for TSLA after having shifted my stance in light of Tesla's Q1 earnings back in April. If you have been following my work on Tesla, you know that my rationale for the downgrade was based on greater macroeconomic uncertainties, dangers of Tesla's recession playbook [making it a binary bet on FSD], and ominous technical setup. Find a more detailed explanation here:

SeekingAlpha

Despite Elon Musk's dire warnings on the economy, investors have been piling into TSLA stock, which apparently looks set to re-test the neckline of its head and shoulders pattern. As you can observe in the chart below, Tesla's stock has already been rejected twice at this key technical level. If Tesla fails to break past this area of resistance, technically, the stock could be headed back down to the mid $100s [and even to the low $100s] in a continuation of the reverse gamma squeeze we saw in late-2022.

WeBull Desktop

In this note, we will discuss major takeaways from Tesla's Annual Shareholder Meeting. And then check up on TSLA's ominous-looking technical chart.

Keeping in tradition with past investor events, Tesla's 2023 Annual Shareholder Meeting and Musk's subsequent CNBC interview (with David Faber) were filled with lots of hyperbolic statements such as "FSD could be the ChatGPT moment for Tesla" and "Demand for Tesla's Optimus Humanoid Bot could be 10 billion units."

Here's a list of noteworthy announcements from the meeting:

The above list covers all the key developments from Tesla's annual shareholder meeting, and since this event has been widely covered, we will not go deeper into it in this note. If you are interested in learning more, I suggest you watch the presentation at Tesla.com or read this detailed SA note.

Now, let's discuss Tesla's business outlook in light of its shareholder meeting.

While Musk stoked the hype engine quite a bit with positive commentary on ambitious projects such as FSD, Cybertruck, Optimus humanoid bot, and two new EV vehicle models (likely a compact car and a Van), none of these are likely to move the needle for Tesla in the near-term.

That said, Tesla's recession playbook is still expected to result in volume growth during 2023. According to consensus street estimates (and Musk), Tesla is likely to do $100B in revenue this year.

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Going forward, consensus analyst estimates peg CAGR sales growth to be in the low-to-mid-20s, which is a far cry from where Tesla's growth has been over the past decade. Given Tesla's scale, I think a slowdown is natural; however, a growth slowdown raises question marks over TSLA's valuation premium. Now, bulls like to value Tesla as a high-margin software company, whereas bears prefer a valuation more in line with other automakers.

Personally, I think the reality is somewhere in between. As I said in my previous note, Tesla is turning into a binary bet on FSD. According to Musk, FSD could boost Tesla's gross margins to ~80%. While I am skeptical about that figure, I think that if FSD achieves full autonomy, Tesla can deliver software-like margins. In this scenario, Tesla would deserve a multiple similar to an Apple Inc. (AAPL) (~25-30x earnings) and not a Ford Motor Company (F) (~5-10x earnings).

Will Tesla FSD reach full autonomy in 2023 or 2024? I don't know. While the likes of Cathie Wood (and many Tesla bulls) think it could happen this year, the jury is still out there. As an investor, I prefer to wait for evidence before trying to model something like FSD into my valuation estimate for the company. And so, I am not altering my model based on Musk's positive FSD commentary from the annual shareholder meeting.

With Q1 results coming (more or less) in line with expectations, I am sticking to most of my pre-earnings assumptions for Tesla. However, in order to factor in the added risk of Tesla turning into a binary bet on FSD due to Musk's recession playbook, I raised our model's "Required IRR" from 15% to 20%.

Also, Tesla's recession playbook is killing its free cash flow ("FCF") generation, and in the interest of improving the margin of safety in our model, I reduced the "Buyback as a % of FCF" (capital return program) assumption from 25% to 0%.

Here's my updated valuation for Tesla:

TQI Valuation Model (TQIG.org)

According to these results, Tesla's fair value is ~$155 per share. With the stock trading at $188 per share, it is currently overvalued by ~17.5%. Now, I am happy to pay a premium for a high-quality company like Tesla; however, is the risk/reward attractive enough to justify an investment at current levels?

TQI Valuation Model (TQIG.org)

Assuming a base case P/FCF exit multiple of 25x, I see Tesla hitting $377 per share by 2027. As can be seen below, Tesla is projected to deliver CAGR returns of 14.94% for the next five years, which more or less meets my investment hurdle rate of 15%.

However, the valuation is not exciting enough to justify a long position by itself, as was the case in late-2022 when Tesla was trading in the low $100s. Since then, macroeconomic conditions have worsened, with multiple bank failures threatening a credit crunch for the economy and a demand crunch for Tesla. In response to flagging demand, Tesla's management has instituted multiple price cuts this year, and this move is causing margin pressures. The longer Musk and Co. execute this aggressive playbook, Tesla's margins are likely to remain under pressure. While we are modeling Tesla using long-term steady-state margins, Mr. Market is a far short-sighted person, and he could sell TSLA off during lean economic times.

And Musk warned about this during the annual shareholder meeting (emphasis added):

This is going to be a challenging 12 months, I sort of want to be realistic about it that Tesla is not immune to the global economic environment. I expect things to be just at a macroeconomic level difficult for at least the next 12 months. Like, Tesla will get through it, and we'll do well and I think we'll see a lot of companies go bankrupt.

The economy moves in cycles, and we've had a very long period of upcycle, and next twelve months will be [I think] difficult for everyone. During Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting, Warren and Charlie actually said this year Berkshire companies are going to make less money. These are very well run organizations and that is generally true for the economy. It's important to remember that there are good times, and there are dark times, which are followed by good times. So my advice would be -

Don't look at the market for the next 12 months. If there's a dip, buy the dip, and you'll not be sorry. My guess is tough times for a year and then Tesla will emerge stronger than ever. Net present value of future cash flows will be incredibly high in my opinion.

The long-term future for Tesla remains bright; however, near-term price action is likely to be volatile, and the technical chart does look ominous.

Earlier in this note, we looked at the H&S pattern on Tesla's chart, and in my view, another rejection from the neckline would be extremely bearish for the stock. From a technical perspective, a breakdown of an H&S formation could result in a downward move equivalent to the gap between the head and the neckline. In Tesla's case, that level falls in the range of $40-60 (based on how you draw the neckline [horizontal or slanted]).

Now, I am not saying Tesla, Inc. stock is headed down to the mid-double digits; however, technicals suggest that this is a possible outcome. From a valuation perspective, Tesla can trade at such levels if it loses growth in a dire economy and the stock gets priced like a traditional automaker (~5-10x earnings). Hence, it is not unrealistic.

WeBull Desktop

While I don't think Tesla should be valued like a traditional automaker, I wouldn't rule it out, as Mr. Market can do crazy things. That said, I would view such a sharp selloff as a massive buying opportunity. Now, such a move is very unlikely to materialize until and unless we end up in a deep recession, which is certainly not my base case right now.

In the short term, I think a move down to $145 is very much on the table, given we still haven't filled the gap there. And if Tesla fails to hold that level, I can even see a re-test of recent lows, i.e., the low $100s.

WeBull Desktop

In a nutshell, Tesla's technical chart is looking ominous. A breakout of the neckline at $215 would make me change my view here. However, for the time being, I think investors can afford to remain patient with Tesla, Inc. stock and wait for a better entry point. If Tesla gets down to the mid-$100s, I will resume accumulation via a DCA plan.

Key Takeaway: I continue to rate Tesla, Inc. stock "Neutral" at ~$188 per share.

Thank you for reading, and happy investing! Please share any questions, thoughts, and/or concerns in the comments section below or DM me.

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Tesla Stock: You Have Been Pumped And Warned By Elon Musk ... - Seeking Alpha

JPMorgan global market strategist Jack Manley and The Fitz-Gerald Group principal Keith Fitz-Gerald discuss Tesla's investor day and if now is the time for investors to get off the sidelines on 'The Claman Countdown.'

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Tuesday that working from home is "morally wrong" when others in the service industry still have to show up in person.

"There are some exceptions, but I think that the whole notion of work from home is a bit like the fake Marie Antoinette quote, Let them eat cake,' Musk told CNBC.

"It's like, really, youre going to work from home and you're going to make everyone else who made your car come work in the factory? You're going to make the people who make your food that they can't work from home? The people that fix your house they can't work from home? But, you can? Does that seem morally right?" the billionaire asked. "That's messed up."

Musk said he saw it as both a productivity issue and a moral issue.

ELON MUSK TELLS TESLA EXECUTIVES HE MUST PERSONALLY APPROVE ALL HIRING IN NEW MEMO: REPORT

Elon Musk walks in the Paddock prior to final practice ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Miami at Miami International Autodrome in Miami on May 6, 2023. (Clive Mason - Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images / Getty Images)

Musk said that workers need to get off their "moral high horse" with their "work from home bulls---."

He added that he is a big believer that employees are more productive when they are in person.

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The "laptop class," Musk noted, is living in "la-la land."

Tesla CEO Elon Musk leaves the Phillip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco on Jan. 24, 2023. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images / Getty Images)

"I'm saying like, look, put 40 hours in," Musk said. "And, frankly, it doesn't even need to be Monday through Friday. You could work Monday through Thursday. And, also, I think people should take vacations."

SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks in Los Angeles on June 13, 2019. (REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo / Reuters Photos)

Musk said there are probably two or three days annually that he does not put in a full day's work.

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Many companies have reversed pandemic work-from-home rules, with others operating remotely or in a hybrid setting permanently.

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Elon Musk slams working from home as 'morally wrong,' says 'laptop class' living in 'la-la land' - Fox Business

Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced changes to the platform's direct messages feature including the introduction of encryption.

STR | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Twitter's power users are still coming to the app, but fewer are posting on it since Elon Musk's acquisition late last year, according to a survey from Pew Research Center.

"The Center's new analysis of actual behavior on the site finds that the most active users before Musk's acquisition defined as the top 20% by tweet volume have seen a noticeable posting decline in the months after," the survey's authors wrote on Wednesday. "These users' average number of tweets per month declined by around 25% following the acquisition."

Additionally, about six in ten U.S. adults who have used Twitter in the past year said they've recently taken breaks from the service, and a quarter of the group indicated they will not use Twitter a year from now, the survey said.

The new data underscore the challenges facing Twitter's incoming CEO, Linda Yaccarino, who will replace Musk. She'll be taking over the ailing social media service, which has lost a number of advertisers over the past few months on concerns that racist and otherwise inappropriate content has flourished since Musk's takeover.

Yaccarino, who recently resigned from her position as NBCUniversal global advertising chief, will need to repair relationships with Twitter's advertisers and get a grasp on content moderation. Musk has slashed the company's workforce by about 80% to roughly 1,500 employees, getting rid of some people that he should've kept, he acknowledged in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday.

"Desperate times call for desperate measures," Musk said. "So there's no question that some of the people who were let go probably shouldn't have been let go."

The Pew survey also showed most of Twitter's content is produced by a small group of power users.

"Since Musk's acquisition, 20% of U.S. adults on the site have produced 98% of all tweets by this group," the survey said.

Upon request for comment, Twitter responded with its now customary poop emoji.

Watch: Elon Musk on Twitter's new CEO

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Twitter's top users are posting less since Musk takeover last year, Pew Survey shows - CNBC

Tech billionaire Elon Musk defended his promotion of conspiracy theories, called the work-from-home trend morally wrong and criticized the direction of tech startup OpenAI in a wide-ranging and at times combative interview Tuesday with CNBC.

The hourlong interview touched on subjects from autonomous vehicles and online free speech to how much sleep Musk gets and whether some of his tweets are antisemitic a reflection of his broad interests and influence as one of the worlds richest people.

Musk said he wouldnt stop sharing extremist views, even after a tweet hours earlier about fellow billionaire George Soros was widely condemned, including by the Israeli government.

Ill say what I want to say, and if the consequence of doing that is losing money, so be it, Musk told CNBC anchor David Faber in the interview, broadcast live from a Tesla facility in Texas.

Musks public statements, especially on Twitter, which he owns, have increasingly veered into online conspiracy theories in recent weeks.

He attacked Soros in several tweets Monday, saying that Soros wants to erode the very fabric of civilization and that he hates humanity. Musk compared Soros, who is a frequent target of anti-Jewish hatred, to Magneto, a fictional Jewish supervillain.

Some Twitter users offered a theory for Musks motivation: Hours before the attacks, a fund Soros controls reported selling its shares in Tesla, of which Musk is CEO.

The attack on Soros drew a swift and pointed denunciation from an official at Israels Foreign Affairs Ministry, David Saranga, who tweeted that Twitter was filled with AntiSemitic conspiracies and hate speech targeting Jews around the world.

Unfortunately Twitter does nothing to address this problem, Saranga wrote.

Musk alleged in other recent tweets that elites were falsifying examples of racial prejudice and that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg bought the 2020 election. Another tweet used a meme popular with white supremacists to try to explain the first two amendments to the Constitution.

Musk told Faber that he stood by his tweets and that he is a prosemite, not an antisemite.

I think thats true. Thats my opinion, he said of his attack on Soros.

Musk continued to insert himself into a discussion of the motives of a gunman who killed at least eight people at a mall in Texas this month. Although law enforcement officials have said the gunman was a suspected neo-Nazi sympathizer, Musk second-guessed them.

It should not be ascribed to white supremacy if its false, he said.

The interview occurred at a whirlwind time for Musk, one of the richest people in the world.

On a business level, he recently hired a new CEO for Twitter, and his company SpaceX tested the most powerful rocket ever created. Tuesday was also the day of Teslas annual shareholder meeting, where he promised to deliver the long-delayed Cybertruck.

On a geopolitical level, he met Monday with French President Emmanuel Macron. Over the weekend, he waded into Turkish national elections when he complied with a government order there to censor the tweets of opponents to President Recep Tayyip Erdoan.

And on a personal level, authorities in the U.S. Virgin Islands said in a court filing Monday that they are seeking documents from Musk in connection with a lawsuit accusing JPMorgan Chase of having helped to enable the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

All the while, Musk keeps popping up in celebrity news, with tabloid coverage of his visits to a Formula 1 race in Miami and a music festival in Cabo San Lucas on Mexicos Pacific coast.

Musk, asked about the upheaval at Twitter since he bought it for $44 billion last year, said some of his layoffs may have gone too far by cutting people he shouldnt have.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, he said. Were not quite at break-even yet, but were close. We need to do it fast. And if you do it fast, unfortunately, theres gonna be some babies thrown out with the bathwater.

Faber asked Musk about an issue the tech industry and other office-based businesses are still wrestling with: how much flexibility there should be to work remotely. He said software engineers and others who have traditionally worked from offices should continue to do so, in part because blue-collar workers cant work from home.

People who make your food that gets delivered they cant work from home. The people that come fix your house, they can't work from home, but you can? Does that seem morally right? Thats messed up, he said.

You see it as a moral issue? Faber asked.

Yes. Its a productivity issue, but its also a moral issue, Musk said.

Musk said he remained upset about the direction of OpenAI, a company he helped to start as a nonprofit, open-source organization in 2015. Musk said he was instrumental in recruiting key scientists and even came up with the name.

It wouldnt exist without me, he said. OpenAI was meant to be open, as in open-source.

Now, however, OpenAI is partly for-profit, and it closely guards much of its work, a shift that began in 2019 as it tried to compete with Google and other companies for talent.

It would be as if you started a nonprofit to save the Amazon rainforest and they transformed themselves into a lumber company, he said.

The interview was unusual in part because Musk rarely grants time to large news outlets, which he frequently criticizes as biased.

Musk said he granted the interview at the recommendation of talent agent and public relations executive Ari Emanuel.

Im not doing an interview with CNBC, the organization, Im doing an interview with David Faber at Ari Emanuels recommendation, Musk tweeted. If David was at another news org, I would still do it.

CNBC is a part of NBCUniversal News Group, which also includes NBC News.

David Ingram covers tech for NBC News.

Excerpt from:

Elon Musk defends his tweets, bashes work-from-home in CNBC interview - NBC News

Barrons senior writer Al Root discusses how Elon Musk has revitalized the space industry and weighs in on his Mars ambitions on Barrons Roundtable.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk warned on Tuesday that the economy is in for a challenging year ahead and said the Federal Reserve will be too slow to lower interest rates as economic conditions worsen.

Musk was interviewed by CNBC's David Faber following Teslas annual meeting and asked Musk about how the Feds policy will make it a tough year for Tesla. Musk responded that it will be a tough year "for everyone, not just Tesla" and attributed it to the Feds recent rate hikes to tamp down stubbornly high inflation.

"You can think of raising the Fed rate as somewhat of a brake pedal on the economy, frankly. It makes a lot of things more expensive certainly things that are bought with credit," Musk said. "But then it has downstream effects even on things that arent bought with credit."

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Billionaire Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, Twitter, and SpaceX, warned that the Federal Reserve will be too slow to lower interest rates, just as it was slow to raise rates as inflation spiked. ((AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File) / AP Newsroom)

Musk explained that "if the car payments or your home mortgage payment is absorbing more of your monthly budget, then you have less money to buy other things. So actually, it affects everything, even those that arent bought on a line of credit."

"My concern with the way the Federal Reserve is making decisions is theyre just operating with too much latency," Musk continued. "Basically, the data is somewhat stale. The Federal Reserve was slow to raise interest rates, and now I think theyre going be slow to lower them."

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Musk said that economic conditions will be challenging "for everyone, not just Tesla" this year. ((Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images) / Getty Images)

Earlier this month, the Fed raised interest rates for the 10th consecutive time and the benchmark federal funds rate is now at the highest levels in 16 years.

But the central bank signaled that may pause further rate hikes and future monetary policy moves will hinge on "incoming information."

INFLATION JUMPED 0.4% IN APRIL AS PRICES REMAIN STUBBORNLY HIGH

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has signaled the Fed may pause interest rate hikes as early as the Fed's next meeting depending on economic data. (Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)

The Feds post-meeting statement noted, "In determining the extent to which additional policy firming may be appropriate to return inflation to 2% over time, the Committee will take into account the cumulative tightening of monetary policy, the lags with which monetary policy affects economic activity and inflation, and economic and financial developments."

The statement omitted a phrase that had been included in the prior statement announcing a rate hike, in which the central bank indicated that "some additional policy firming may be appropriate" to bring inflation to the 2% target.

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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said in a post-meeting press conference that, "A decision on a pause was not made today," but emphasized that, "Were no longer saying that we anticipate," and reiterated that the Feds future policy decisions will "be driven by incoming data, meeting to meeting."

FOX Business Megan Henney contributed to this report.

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Musk warns of economic headwinds, says Fed will be slow to lower rates - Fox Business