Investor's Corner
Tesla names Robyn Denholm as new Chair of the Board, replacing Elon Musk
Effective immediately, finance veteran and longtime board member Robyn Denholm will be the Chair of Tesla’s Board of Directors, replacing outgoing Chairman Elon Musk. The appointment, which was announced late Wednesday, was posted on the company’s official blog.
Robyn Denholm has been a member of Tesla’s Board since 2014, a time when the electric car maker was still producing just one vehicle, the Model S. As such, Ms. Denholm is no stranger to Tesla’s hyper-driven environment and ambitious goals, being witness to the growing pains the company went through with the Model X ramp and the Model 3’s “production hell.” Ms. Denholm was also appointed as the electric car maker’s Audit Committee Chair.
Prior to her appointment as Elon Musk’s replacement, she was serving as the Chief Finance Officer and Head of Strategy at Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications company. Once her six-month notice period with the Australian firm is complete, she will be working as Tesla’s Chair on a full-time basis. As she completes her final months at Telstra, Ms. Denholm will be stepping down from her post as the electric car maker’s Audit Committee Chair as well.
Robyn Denholm will be bringing a considerable amount of financial expertise to Tesla. From July 2013 to February 2016, for example, she served as the Chief Financial & Operations Officer of Juniper Networks. At Juniper, she was responsible for finance, administration and business operations, including planning, real estate, investor relations, internal audit, IT, and manufacturing operations. Under her leadership, Juniper’s revenues more than doubled. She was also a key driver of the company’s 2014 restructuring, which resulted in Juniper Networks reaching record revenue and profitability.
The finance veteran is no stranger to the auto industry as well, having worked for Toyota Motor Corporation Australia in the past. During her time with the Japanese carmaker, she served as Toyota Australia’s National Manager of Finance.
Being with the electric car maker since 2014, Ms. Denholm is heavily invested in Tesla’s long-term success and profitability. A report from the Financial Review published last August noted that as of Tesla’s last annual report, the incoming Board Chair held around 140,000 TSLA shares vesting over time. At the current price of the electric car maker’s stock, these shares would amount to more than $48 million. A statement from Tesla to CNBC further noted that Ms. Denholm would receive 8,000 stock options each year and a cash retainer of $300,000.
“I believe in this company, I believe in its mission, and I look forward to helping Elon, and the Tesla team achieve sustainable profitability and drive long-term shareholder value,” Ms. Denholm said.
For his part, Elon Musk noted that the finance veteran had contributed greatly towards Tesla’s transition into a profitable company. Musk also stated that he is looking forward to working with Tesla’s new Board Chair.
“Robyn has extensive experience in both the tech and auto industries, and she has made significant contributions as a Tesla Board member over the past four years in helping us become a profitable company. I look forward to working even more closely with Robyn as we continue accelerating the advent of sustainable energy,” Musk said.
Robyn Denholm’s appointment as Tesla’s new Board Chair is part of Elon Musk’s settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which filed a lawsuit against the CEO over his now-infamous tweet last August, where he stated that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share and that he had “funding secured.” Under the terms of the settlement, Elon Musk was required to step down as Chairman of Tesla’s Board. Two new independent directors would also have to be appointed. Elon Musk and Tesla Inc. would have to pay a fine of $20 million each as well, which would, in turn, be distributed to harmed investors under a court-approved process.
Tesla turned over a new leaf in the third quarter when it surprised Wall Street by posting $6.8 billion in revenue and beating earnings estimates with a GAAP profit of $312 million. During the earnings call and in a recent appearance at the Recode Decode podcast, Elon Musk stated that Tesla would stay cash-flow positive in the coming quarters. With a Board Chair that has an extensive background in finance, Tesla’s coming quarters would likely be even more profitable.
Tesla’s official blog post on Robyn Denholm’s appointment as new Board Chair could be accessed here.
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.
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.
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.
Elon Musk
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.
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.
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.
Elon Musk
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.
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.
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.
What does a Merger of Equals mean to Elon’s compensation packages?
Well, it changes everything.
Enjoy https://t.co/uekCldyITw pic.twitter.com/kolq1C9qTu
— AleXandra Merz 🇺🇲 (@TeslaBoomerMama) June 1, 2026
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.
Do you plan on buying @SpaceX stock at its IPO?
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) June 1, 2026
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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