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Former Nikola CEO Trevor Milton defends his Board nominees

Miljøstiftelsen ZERO, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

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Former Nikola CEO Trevor Milton is fighting back against the Board of Directors’ decision to reject his five director nominees. The Nikola Board announced its rejection of Milton’s director nominees earlier this month. 

Milton had nominated Cole Cannon, Derek Johnson, Hans Peterson, Paul Southam, and Dave Sparks, who runs the HeavyD YouTube channel, for Nikola’s Board of Directors. The current Nikola Board cited several reasons behind its rejection of Milton’s nominees, from their alleged lack of experience in a public company to a lack of skills. 

“The director nominees have no public company experience, add no skills or experience to the board, and indisputably lack the depth of experience that the current Nikola board members bring to the Company. Additionally, it is the Company’s belief that the director nominees lack the expertise or knowledge needed to navigate the complexities of a zero-emissions trucking and energy infrastructure business,” Nikola’s current Board wrote in a press release

In a press release, M&M Residual, LLC, an entity connected to Milton, together with its affiliates, argued that the former CEO’s director nominees should be considered. As per the shareholder group, which owns about 4.5% of Nikola stock, Milton’s selections should help the company fix its issues and put it back on a path to value creation. The group argued that Nikola’s leadership today has shown subpar performance, with the company’s stock nearly getting wiped out.

“Since taking over as Chair in 2020, CEO Steve Girsky and his Board have overseen a staggering and consistent decline in Nikola’s stock from $30+ per share to a delisting Nasdaq price of less than seventy cents per share… For approximately four years now, the Board has overseen operational underperformance, value destructive acquisitions, the breakdown of the Iveco Group-Nikola partnership, the loss of meaningful European market share and the sale of key assets while taking on debt. These actions (among other concerning missteps surrounding safety and disclosures) have resulted in the destruction of nearly 100% of stockholder value.

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Concerningly, the Board also diluted Nikola shares to the tune of an additional 800 million last year, so that over 1.6 billion total shares are now authorized with over 1 billion shares in circulation. After destroying significant value and diluting stockholders as Chair, Steve Girsky then took the helm as CEO in August 2023. Under Mr. Girsky’s leadership, stockholders suffered an approximate 72% decline in value. No matter how you look at it, over all relevant time periods this management team and Board have obliterated stockholder value and put our Company at risk,” the stockholder group noted. 

The group claimed that it had been approached by numerous stockholders who wish to see the current leadership of Nikola replaced. M&M Residual, LLC and its affiliates’ press release also noted that Milton’s five picks for Nikola’s director post have already started working on an operational strategy that would improve the company. 

“Our Group has been approached by numerous stockholders who want to see CEO Steve Girsky and his Board replaced with high-integrity individuals. This is a reasonable request, especially considering Nikola recently disclosed that substantial doubt exists regarding its ability to continue as a going concern through the next 12 months… In stark contrast to the current Board, our independent slate includes proven founders and executives who collectively possess the operational, supply chain, and electric vehicle experience that we believe will be required to initiate a value-enhancing turnaround at Nikola. Our five-member slate has already begun working on an operating strategy that considers the interests of stockholders, employees, partners, and customers,” the shareholder group noted. 

Don’t hesitate to contact us with news tips. Just send a message to simon@teslarati.com to give us a heads up.

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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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Elon Musk

SpaceX Starship Flight 10: What to expect

SpaceX implemented hardware and operational changes aimed at improving Starship’s reliability.

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Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX is preparing to launch the tenth test flight of its Starship vehicle as early as Sunday, August 24, with the launch window opening at 6:30 p.m. CT. 

The mission follows investigations into anomalies from earlier flights, including the loss of Starship on its ninth test and a Ship 36 static fire issue. SpaceX has since implemented hardware and operational changes aimed at improving Starship’s reliability.

Booster landing burns and flight experiments

The upcoming Starship Flight 10 will expand Super Heavy’s flight envelope with multiple landing burn trials. Following stage separation, the booster will attempt a controlled flip and boostback burn before heading to an offshore splashdown in the Gulf of America. One of the three center engines typically used for landing will be intentionally disabled, allowing engineers to evaluate whether a backup engine can complete the maneuver, according to a post from SpaceX.

The booster will also transition to a two-engine configuration for the final phase, hovering briefly above the water before shutdown and drop. These experiments are designed to simulate off-nominal scenarios and generate real-world data on performance under varying conditions, while maximizing propellant use during ascent to enable heavier payloads.

Starship upper stage reentry tests

The Starship upper stage will attempt multiple in-space objectives, including deployment of eight Starlink simulators and a planned Raptor engine relight. SpaceX will also continue testing reentry systems with several modifications. A section of thermal protection tiles has been removed to expose vulnerable areas, while new metallic tile designs, including one with active cooling, will be trialed.

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Catch fittings have been installed to evaluate their thermal and structural performance, and adjustments to the tile line will address hot spots observed on Flight 6. The reentry profile is expected to push the structural limits of Starship’s rear flaps at maximum entry pressure.

SpaceX says lessons from these tests are critical to refining the next-generation Starship and Super Heavy vehicles. With Starfactory production ramping in Texas and new launch infrastructure under development in Florida, the company is pushing to hit its goal of achieving a fully reusable orbital launch system.

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Elon Musk takes aim at Bill Gates’ Microsoft with new AI venture “Macrohard”

It is quite an appropriate name for a company that’s designed to rival Microsoft.

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Credit: xAI/X

Elon Musk has set his sights on Microsoft with a new company called “Macrohard,” a software venture tied to his AI startup, xAI. 

Musk described the project as a “purely AI software company” that’s designed to generate hundreds of specialized coding and generative AI agents that could one day simulate products from companies like Microsoft entirely through artificial intelligence.

Macrohard‘s Purpose

Musk announced Macrohard on Friday, though xAI had already registered the trademark with the US Patent Office a few weeks ago, as noted in a PC Mag report. Interestingly enough, this is not the first time that Musk has mentioned such an initiative.

Just last month, he stated that xAI was “creating a multi-agent AI software company, where Grok spawns hundreds of specialized coding and image/video generation/understanding agents all working together and then emulates humans interacting with the software in virtual machines until the result is excellent.”

At the time, Musk stated that “This is a macro challenge and a hard problem with stiff competition,” hinting at the venture’s “Macrohard” moniker. A few years ago, Musk also posted “Macrohard >> Microsoft” on X. 

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Powered by xAI and Colossus

Macrohard appears to be closely linked to xAI’s Colossus 2 supercomputer project in Memphis. Musk has confirmed plans to acquire millions of Nvidia GPUs, joining rivals such as OpenAI and Meta in a high-stakes race for AI computing power. Colossus is already one of the most powerful supercomputer clusters in the world, and it is still being expanded.

xAI is only a couple of years old, having been founded in March 2023. During its Engineering Open House event in San Francisco, Elon Musk highlighted that the company’s speed will be its primary competitive edge. “No SR-71 Blackbird was ever shot down and it only had one strategy: to accelerate,” Musk said.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk confirms he’s still in wartime CEO mode

He is still locked in.

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Wcamp9, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Elon Musk tends to use social media platform X as his personal platform to express himself, so much so that critics tend to allege that the CEO is no longer serious about his numerous companies. 

As per Musk, he is still very much in wartime CEO mode, despite all the jokes and fun posts about Ani on X. 

Elon Musk leads several prolific companies, much more than the average CEO. And while Tesla is the only publicly traded entity that he currently leads, Musk is so visible that everyone across the internet pretty much has a strong opinion of him one way or another. For his longtime supporters and followers, however, what truly matters is if Musk is locked in.

Considering that Elon Musk’s feed on X has recently been filled with AI imagery, a good portion of which involve AI-rendered women, some X users have expressed concerns that the CEO may be losing focus once more. Musk responded to one such user by highlighting his very busy schedule and his numerous active projects. 

Needless to say, Elon Musk is still locked in. He is still in “wartime CEO” mode.

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As per the CEO, even his recent AI posts about AI are “part of a broader vision and strategy.” He also highlighted that SpaceX’s Starship Flight 10 is launching in a few days, xAI’s Grok 5 is starting its training next month, and Tesla’s Autopilot V14 is also coming next month. As per Musk, “long-term strategy is compelling.”

Elon Musk’s comments are quite accurate. While he may seem to spend all his time on X, after all, he is very much still neck-deep in all his companies’ projects. There is a reason why Musk became known as a visionary, and a lot of it is because he really is intimately involved in all of his companies’ projects. 

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