Investor's Corner
How Elon Musk walked away from Tesla’s privatization despite $30 billion offer
Last Wednesday, Elon Musk received an offer for the company’s possible privatization. The proposal was presented to Musk by advisers from Goldman Sachs and Silver Lake, and included a roster of prolific investors willing to contribute as much as $30 billion to Tesla. A day later, Musk met with the company’s Board of Directors at the Fremont factory and announced that he is withdrawing his proposal to take the company private.
The story of Tesla’s attempted privatization started off with a tweet. On August 7, Elon Musk announced on Twitter that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share. Musk also added that funding had been secured for the deal. Later tweets during the day further suggested that the deal was quite certain and that Tesla’s privatization only needed a shareholder vote. Musk eventually published a blog post explaining his tweet a few days later, stating that his reference to funding being secured came from talks with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. The weeks following Musk’s initial announcement were volatile. SEC investigations were reportedly started, lawsuits were filed, and the company’s shares took a deep dive, at one point dipping below $290 per share.
Musk had been thinking of taking Tesla private for a while now. Being a public company, Tesla is subjected to the wild swings of the stock market, relentless attacks from short-sellers, and quarterly pressures from Wall Street. Musk’s other company, SpaceX, is private, and it pretty much runs like a far better-oiled version of Tesla. In an email to the Wall Street Journal this past weekend, Elon Musk explained that Tesla’s privatization was only feasible now, as the company is poised to rise considerably in the coming months.
“In my opinion, the value of Tesla will rise considerably in the coming months and years, possibly putting any take-private beyond the reach of any investors. It was now or perhaps never,” Musk wrote.
Elon Musk hired several high-profile advisers for Tesla’s possible privatization, including bankers from Goldman Sachs, as well as attorneys from Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Musk also hired Egon Durban of Silver Lake Partners, who had brokered and helped bankroll the buyout of computer maker Dell when it went private. Musk also kept close counsel with Tesla executives such as Chief Technology Officer J.B. Straubel, Attorney Todd Maron (who was once his divorce lawyer), finance chief Deepak Ahuja, and his brother Kimbal, who also holds a seat at Tesla’s board.
On August 18, Elon Musk presented ideas about how Tesla’s privatization could be done. According to the Wall Street Journal, the members of the Board were in support of Musk’s go-private initiative, though some had reservations about the CEO’s actions on Twitter. Musk reportedly admitted to his rashness and pledged to exercise more self-control on the social media platform. Musk then went over to the Fremont factory, where he worked until past midnight, tweeting past 2 a.m. that he had just gotten home. He was able to rest the following day.
Tesla’s advisers went into overdrive on August 20 and 21, coming up with a list of possible investors that would provide funding for the company to go private. By August 22, advisers from Goldman Sachs and Silver Lake had a list of interested investors who were willing to fund Tesla’s privatization at $420 per share. Among them were Silver Lake itself, as well as German auto giant Volkswagen AG. The investors have reportedly agreed to contribute as much as $30 billion for the deal. Elon Musk had reservations.
Musk was reportedly suspicious of rival car companies taking a stake in Tesla, particularly since they could piggyback on what the CEO called the “Tesla Halo.” Musk was also bothered by the notion that some of Tesla’s most ardent supporters would likely be pushed out of the privatization deal. For one, Fidelity Investments, which has supported Tesla over the years, would not be able to roll its entire stake in the company due to regulatory constraints.
Retail investors — individual shareholders who believe in Tesla’s mission and are putting in their hard-earned money into the company — might be in jeopardy as well. Then there was the photo. Earlier this month, Musk received a photo emailed to him by an elderly couple dressed in Tesla t-shirts with a handwritten sign congratulating the company for producing 7,000 electric cars in seven days. The message in the photo was short, simply saying “Thanks, Elon! Two happy stockholders!” Musk reportedly forwarded the email to a friend, writing that the picture “Made my day.”
After giving him the $30 billion offer, the privatization deal team advised Musk that the funding would likely come with several strings attached, as some major investors might want to have specific terms for themselves. Some would also demand to have a lot of say in the company.
The day after, a board meeting was held in a conference room at the Fremont factory — one that still had a used sleeping bag from Musk’s overnight working sessions at the facility. The company’s financial advisers stated that they were confident that Tesla’s privatization could be done. Then, it was Musk’s turn to speak.
“Based on the latest information I have, I’m withdrawing the proposal,” Musk said.
Elon Musk’s blog post explaining his decision to keep the company public was published on Tesla’s official website a day later.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) will report its earnings for the second quarter of 2026 this evening after market close, and investors and analysts are waiting anxiously to see what the company will report for the second three-month span of the year.
Analysts have already put out their expectations from a financial standpoint for the company’s second quarter, but what’s unknown is what Tesla plans to discuss during the call.
Financial Expectations
Wall Street consensus expectations put Tesla’s Earnings Per Share (EPS) at $0.53, while revenues are expected to come in around $26.4 billion.
This would compare to an EPS of $0.39 and $22.19 billion compared to Tesla’s Q2 2025. Last quarter, EPS came in at $0.41 on $22.387 billion of revenue. Additionally in Q1, Tesla beat analyst expectations, but shares dropped over 3 percent the following trading day.
What We Expect
In terms of discussions, Tesla earnings are pretty sporadic and depend on a handful of things, including current events, investor questions, and more.
Tesla uses a platform called Say to field questions from investors and analysts. These questions are what will be used during the call. Here are the top 5 from the Retail side and top 3 from the Institutional side:
Retail:
“Tesla has missed short-term guidance on robotaxi 3 earnings reports in a row, from 50% coverage of USA by end of 2025 to most recently 7 new cities in 1H26. What is keeping Tesla back from accomplishing these short term goals that they’ve set for themselves?”
“What are the main constraints to expanding robotaxi operations faster, and how do you see that lining up with Cybercab production?”
“What’s the current status of Optimus Gen 3 production ramp, initial deployment in factories, and external sales timeline/volume for 2027? What tasks can we expect the Optimus to perform by end of 2027?”
“To reward long-term Tesla retail shareholders for their loyalty, can you commit to achieving at least half of the goals outlined in your 2025 compensation plan before considering any offers to acquire or merge Tesla?”
“Why has growth of robotaxi vehicles stalled? When will we see cybercab start customer rides?”
Institutional
“Previously, you’ve said Tesla would lead the R&D while SpaceX would lead production for Terafab. Can you provide an update on how that division of responsibilities is evolving, and any additional clarity on the expected capital contributions from Tesla and SpaceX?”
“For autonomous driving, Tesla’s fleet created a huge data advantage by collecting billions of real-world miles. That advantage doesn’t yet exist for Optimus. How should we think about data availability and its impact on Optimus development?”
“Why is it necessary to limit robotaxi operations within specific zones within cities to start? Will every city have to be rolled out this way?”
Tesla will report earnings for Q2 this evening with the Shareholder Deck at 4 p.m. ET, with the call starting around 5:30 p.m. ET.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk handed Grok something no other AI company can get their hands on
Elon Musk says SpaceX will feed engineering data into Grok’s next model, avoiding restricted material.
Elon Musk said Tuesday that SpaceX will feed its internal engineering data into the next major training run for Grok, the AI model now folded into SpaceX following February’s merger. In a post on X, Musk wrote that SpaceX’s “massive corpus of world-class engineering data,” excluding anything restricted under U.S. arms export law, will be added during supplemental training of what he called the “2T run,” a reference to a roughly two trillion parameter model that would nearly double the parameters behind the latest Grok 4.5 that’s rolling out.
SpaceX’s massive corpus of world-class engineering data (excluding material blocked by ITAR) will be added during supplemental training of the 2T run.
This will dramatically improve Grok’s engineering capabilities. https://t.co/BbQEViFByn
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2026
The excluded material that Musk is referring to would fall under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which restricts export of technical data tied to defense and space hardware. That likely rules out propulsion specifics for Merlin and Raptor engines along with guidance and control details for SpaceX’s launch vehicles, but leaves manufacturing knowledge, materials science, and Starlink hardware design on the table.
The announcement extends a pattern that has been building since SpaceX’s Nasdaq debut in June, when the company went public with Grok and xAI’s Colossus supercomputer folded into the pitch to investors.
Days after that listing, SpaceX closed its $60 billion all stock acquisition of coding startup Cursor, giving xAI both enterprise software distribution and a stream of real world developer data to train on. Grok 4.5 launched July 8 running partly on that Cursor training data, with Musk describing it as roughly comparable to Anthropic’s Opus 4.7 but faster and cheaper to run.
Feeding SpaceX’s own engineering data into the next AI model follows the same logic Musk has applied across xAI’s sister companies. Tesla supplies real world driving data and manufacturing expertise, X supplies conversational data, and now SpaceX supplies aerospace engineering data built up since 2002.
Musk did not give a release date for the upcoming AI model, referred to elsewhere as Grok 4.6. He has said the two trillion parameter run is in its final training phase and expected to wrap this week.
In a pointed message on X, Elon Musk warned that firms maintaining significant short positions in SpaceX over time face “very low” survival probability.
The statement comes amid post-IPO volatility for the rocket company, now trading under the ticker $SPCX.
The survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 17, 2026
Five weeks after what was described as the largest IPO in history, the stock had fallen roughly 30% from its peak above $2.6 trillion, briefly surpassing Microsoft and Amazon in market value. Short sellers celebrated gains of about $8.7 billion, but Musk’s reply underscores his long-term conviction.
The warning directly echoes a detailed bullish analysis arguing that Starship’s cost reductions could unlock a multi-trillion-dollar space economy. Projects ranging from solar power beamed from orbit and asteroid mining to orbital data centers and Mars terraforming were projected to create over $100 trillion in new market capitalization.
In this vision, SpaceX acts as the essential infrastructure provider, akin to AWS for cloud computing, capturing monopoly-like revenues from launches, crew transport, and data traffic across a rapidly expanding frontier.
This is far from the first time Musk has targeted short sellers. With Tesla, he has repeatedly framed persistent bears as destined for major losses. In July 2024, Musk declared that once Tesla achieves full autonomy and volume production of Optimus robots, “anyone still holding a short position will be obliterated. Even Gates,” referencing Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ reported short bets.
Elon Musk reveals what Tesla stock surge could do to Bill Gates
Earlier, in 2018, he taunted shorts that they had “about three weeks before their short position explodes,” a remark followed by sharp stock gains. Musk has also called short selling “value destroying” and once suggested it “should be illegal,” viewing it as betting against innovation and progress.
Critics often dismiss Musk’s optimism as hype, especially when near-term metrics like quarterly deliveries or stock fluctuations disappoint.
Yet his pattern remains consistent: framing short positions against his companies as fundamentally misjudging exponential technological leaps. For SpaceX shorts, the message is clear: betting against multi-planetary ambitions and the infrastructure monopoly they enable carries existential risk for the firms involved.
As Musk and supporters see it, the space economy’s upside dwarfs Earth-bound valuation models, making today’s dips temporary in a decades-long ascent.
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