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Elon Musk posts update on Tesla’s privatization, narrates meeting with Saudi Arabian sovereign fund

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In an update on Tesla’s official blog, Elon Musk provided more details about his bid to take the company private. The CEO narrated how he brought the go-private initiative to Tesla’s board of directors, and how he got in touch with the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund as a possible source of funding for Tesla’s privatization.

Musk released his update on Monday, less than an hour before markets opened. Musk noted that he initially notified the company’s board of directors about his intentions of making Tesla private on August 2. The board, save for Musk and his brother Kimbal, then met to discuss the proposal to take Tesla private. It was then agreed that Musk would be reaching out to the company’s prominent shareholders to discuss the idea of Tesla going private.

Apart from narrating how the proposal to take Tesla private was brought to the board of directors, Musk also explained the rationale behind his decision to announce that funding was “secured” on Twitter last week. The statement, according to Musk, came after a meeting with the Managing Director of the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund on July 31. Musk also discussed the next steps that Tesla would take moving forward.

Elon Musk’s update on Tesla’s privatization appears to have positively affected the company’s stock. When markets opened on Monday, Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) was up 0.99% at $359.00 per share.

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Following is the entirety of Musk’s update on Tesla’s possible privatization.

As I announced last Tuesday, I’m considering taking Tesla private because I believe it could be good for our shareholders, enable Tesla to operate at its best, and advance our mission of accelerating the transition to sustainable energy. As I continue to consider this, I want to answer some of the questions that have been asked since last Tuesday.

What has happened so far?
On August 2nd, I notified the Tesla board that, in my personal capacity, I wanted to take Tesla private at $420 per share. This was a 20% premium over the ~$350 then current share price (which already reflected a ~16% increase in the price since just prior to announcing Q2 earnings on August 1st). My proposal was based on using a structure where any existing shareholder who wished to remain as a shareholder in a private Tesla could do so, with the $420 per share buyout used only for shareholders that preferred that option.

After an initial meeting of the board’s outside directors to discuss my proposal (I did not participate, nor did Kimbal), a full board meeting was held. During that meeting, I told the board about the funding discussions that had taken place (more on that below) and I explained why this could be in Tesla’s long-term interest.

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At the end of that meeting, it was agreed that as a next step, I would reach out to some of Tesla’s largest shareholders. Our largest investors have been extremely supportive of Tesla over the years, and understanding whether they had the ability and desire to remain as shareholders in a private Tesla is of critical importance to me. They are the ones who believed in Tesla when no one else did and they are the ones who most believe in our future. I told the board that I would report back after I had these discussions.

Why did I make a public announcement?
The only way I could have meaningful discussions with our largest shareholders was to be completely forthcoming with them about my desire to take the company private. However, it wouldn’t be right to share information about going private with just our largest investors without sharing the same information with all investors at the same time. As a result, it was clear to me that the right thing to do was announce my intentions publicly. To be clear, when I made the public announcement, just as with this blog post and all other discussions I have had on this topic, I am speaking for myself as a potential bidder for Tesla.

Why did I say “funding secured”?
Going back almost two years, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund has approached me multiple times about taking Tesla private. They first met with me at the beginning of 2017 to express this interest because of the important need to diversify away from oil. They then held several additional meetings with me over the next year to reiterate this interest and to try to move forward with a going private transaction. Obviously, the Saudi sovereign fund has more than enough capital needed to execute on such a transaction.

Recently, after the Saudi fund bought almost 5% of Tesla stock through the public markets, they reached out to ask for another meeting. That meeting took place on July 31st. During the meeting, the Managing Director of the fund expressed regret that I had not moved forward previously on a going private transaction with them, and he strongly expressed his support for funding a going private transaction for Tesla at this time. I understood from him that no other decision makers were needed and that they were eager to proceed.

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I left the July 31st meeting with no question that a deal with the Saudi sovereign fund could be closed, and that it was just a matter of getting the process moving. This is why I referred to “funding secured” in the August 7th announcement.

Following the August 7th announcement, I have continued to communicate with the Managing Director of the Saudi fund. He has expressed support for proceeding subject to financial and other due diligence and their internal review process for obtaining approvals. He has also asked for additional details on how the company would be taken private, including any required percentages and any regulatory requirements.

Another critical point to emphasize is that before anyone is asked to decide on going private, full details of the plan will be provided, including the proposed nature and source of the funding to be used. However, it would be premature to do so now. I continue to have discussions with the Saudi fund, and I also am having discussions with a number of other investors, which is something that I always planned to do since I would like for Tesla to continue to have a broad investor base. It is appropriate to complete those discussions before presenting a detailed proposal to an independent board committee.

It is also worth clarifying that most of the capital required for going private would be funded by equity rather than debt, meaning that this would not be like a standard leveraged buyout structure commonly used when companies are taken private. I do not think it would be wise to burden Tesla with significantly increased debt.

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Therefore, reports that more than $70B would be needed to take Tesla private dramatically overstate the actual capital raise needed. The $420 buyout price would only be used for Tesla shareholders who do not remain with our company if it is private. My best estimate right now is that approximately two-thirds of shares owned by all current investors would roll over into a private Tesla.

What are the next steps?
As mentioned earlier, I made the announcement last Tuesday because I felt it was the right and fair thing to do so that all investors had the same information at the same time. I will now continue to talk with investors, and I have engaged advisors to investigate a range of potential structures and options. Among other things, this will allow me to obtain a more precise understanding of how many of Tesla’s existing public shareholders would remain shareholders if we became private.

If and when a final proposal is presented, an appropriate evaluation process will be undertaken by a special committee of Tesla’s board, which I understand is already in the process of being set up, together with the legal counsel it has selected. If the board process results in an approved plan, any required regulatory approvals will need to be obtained and the plan will be presented to Tesla shareholders for a vote.

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Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla has its answer to auto growth, it just has to bring it to the U.S.: analyst

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Credit: Tesla China

Tesla has its answer to grow its automotive sales over the next few years, TD Cowen analyst Itay Michaeli says, but it just has to bring it to the U.S.

On Thursday, Michaeli reiterated his $490 price target and the ‘Buy’ rating he already held on Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA). However, its automotive division has struggled to show sequential growth over the past few years, mostly due to its focus on AI and Full Self-Driving. Tesla already axed two of its lower-volume vehicles with the Model S and Model X earlier this year.

However, Tesla does not need to engineer an entire new vehicle to trigger an upward tick in sales; it just has to bring it from China to the U.S., Michaeli said.

He is talking about the Model Y L, a slightly larger version of the all-electric crossover that is already available in China. U.S. customers have been pleading with CEO Elon Musk to bring it to the country since its launch in Asia last year, but he’s not convinced of it because of the advent of self-driving and its importance in this particular market.

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The problem is that Tesla owners have been requesting something larger that could fit a typical American family. The Model Y L is slightly larger than the standard Model Y, but some are concerned that it could still be too small to fit what most people might need.

Instead, they have asked for a full-size SUV from Tesla.

Tesla gives big hint that it will build Cyber SUV, smaller Cybertruck

Nevertheless, the Model Y L still presents a great opportunity for Tesla in the U.S., and Michaeli says that there is an additional sales opportunity of about 100,000 units, with demand potential falling somewhere between 60,000 and 135,000 units.

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TD Cowen’s note to investors also analyzed that Tesla’s growth could come from a stock perspective as well, positively impacting the stock price, as it has been widely reliant on vehicle sales, even though Tesla has truly phased itself away from that being an important metric.

Tesla stands to gain greatly from the introduction of the Model Y L in the U.S., but only if Elon Musk sees it as a viable fit for the market. Families may need to see Tesla bring something larger to the U.S., or they might be forced to buy from another automaker that offers something that fits is needs for more interior space to haul around the kids.

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SpaceXAI just launched into your kitchen with their new app

SpaceXAI just powered its first consumer app and it predicts what you want to buy.

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SpaceXAI just made its first move into consumer AI, and it involves your grocery cart. On June 3, 2026, Gopuff and SpaceXAI announced the launch of Go, a Grok-powered shopping assistant built directly into the Gopuff app that predicts what you need before you even start searching for it.

Gopuff is an instant delivery platform that operates more than 400 micro-fulfillment centers across the U.S., delivering everyday essentials, snacks, drinks, and household items in as little as 15 minutes. It is not a restaurant delivery app or a marketplace. It owns its inventory, controls its warehouses, and handles its own logistics, which means it has built one of the most detailed consumer behavior datasets in retail over its 13-year history.

Go combines SpaceXAI’s advanced reasoning, voice, and image generation models with Gopuff’s dataset of hundreds of millions of orders and real-time cultural signals from X to prepare a suggested cart the moment a customer opens the app. It learns each shopper’s habits and automatically builds a personalized cart based on time of day, location, order history, and real-time indicators. Returning customers can check out with a single tap.


Rather than searching for specific items, users can describe a situation like a game-day party or the desire for a healthy breakfast and Go will assemble a cart automatically. It can also predict when shoppers are running low on items like coffee or paper towels and have them packed and delivered in under 15 minutes. Grok voice integration lets users talk to the app in plain conversational language and check out completely hands-free.

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Gopuff co-founder and co-CEO Yakir Gola said: “Today, we believe the greatest friction left in commerce is not delivery or instantaneous access to the essentials customers need. It’s the moment before: the thinking, the deciding, the remembering. We’re combining Gopuff’s demand intelligence with xAI’s frontier reasoning to create an everyday shopping experience that feels like a true extension of you.”

Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO

The timing carries context beyond the product launch. SpaceXAI was formed after SpaceX completed an all-stock merger with Elon Musk’s xAI earlier this year, folding one of the most advanced AI labs in the world into the same corporate structure as the company preparing what could be the largest IPO in history. SpaceXAI is dipping into consumer-focused AI just as it prepares for its public debut, and while Musk has openly discussed building an everything app, this launch uses Grok to power another company’s product rather than launching a standalone consumer platform. Every consumer-facing deployment of Grok ahead of the IPO roadshow adds tangible evidence that SpaceXAI is not just an infrastructure play but a direct competitor in the AI application layer where OpenAI and Google are already fighting for dominance.

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SpaceX’s amended S-1 is sparking a major Tesla merger conversation

A single line in SpaceX’s amended S-1 just sent Tesla stock down 5% in one day.

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A single line buried in SpaceX’s amended S-1 filing is doing more to move Tesla’s stock price than anything Tesla itself has announced in months. The clause, disclosed as SpaceX prepares for what could be the largest IPO in Wall Street history, states that the company “may issue a significant amount of equity in connection with future transactions.” While this may be seen as boilerplate language in S-1 filings, the historical ties between SpaceX and Tesla, and with Elon Musk reportedly discussing a possible merger with close colleagues, investors are interpreting it as something closer to a signal.

The concern among institutional investors like Gary Black, managing director of The Future Fund, pointed directly to the amended filing on X, saying it “strongly suggests more SPCX equity will be issued,” which could potentially be used to acquire Tesla. He estimated such a deal could be 28% dilutive to Tesla shareholders since SpaceX would likely command a significantly higher valuation multiple. Black added that institutional investors he knows hate the idea of a combination because they prefer pure plays over conglomerates, which he said “nearly always gravitate to the lowest common multiple.”

The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building

The bull case runs the math differently. Tesla influencer and retail shareholder advocate AleXandra Merz pushed back on what she called a widespread misunderstanding of how merger-of-equals deals actually work. Rather than simply splitting the difference between two market caps, a merger exchange ratio is negotiated based on relative fair market values, meaning the lower valued company typically sees its stock reprice upward toward the deal value.

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Under her model, SpaceX enters at a $2.5 trillion valuation and Tesla at $1.6 trillion, producing a combined entity worth $4.1 trillion split evenly between both shareholder groups. That implies Tesla’s side of the deal would be valued at $2.05 trillion, a gain of roughly $450 billion from its current market cap. She cited Dow-DuPont and CBS-Viacom as historical examples of how markets reprice both companies toward the announced exchange ratio after a deal is unveiled.


The SpaceX S-1 amendments also revealed just how much financial infrastructure already binds the two companies together. As Teslarati has reported, SpaceX purchased $697 million in Tesla Megapacks, $131 million in Cybertrucks, and the two companies have shared supply chain resources, and semiconductor fabrication plans since well before any merger conversation became public. A retail poll by Tesla influencer Sawyer Merritt is finding that 36% of respondents do not plan to buy SpaceX shares at IPO and 15.3% saying their decision depends on the valuation.


Whether the merger happens or not, the amended filing is seemingly moving markets and sharpened a debate that is no longer theoretical. SpaceX is weeks away from trading publicly, and Tesla shareholders are now watching every word of every filing for clues about what Musk plans to do next.

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