Tesla Inc. TSLA 1.32% and SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk late Thursday said he might quit his jobs, without providing details about which positions he might relinquish or how serious he was about changing roles.
Mr. Musk on Twitter said “thinking of quitting my jobs & becoming an influencer full-time wdyt,” using an abbreviation for “what do you think?”
Earlier this year Mr. Musk told analysts he expected to be CEO of Tesla for several years.
Mr. Musk in an interview at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council summit this week said “I do crack a lot of jokes. They don’t all land, but I am aspirationally funny.” Mr. Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment about whether he was serious about potentially giving up his positions running Tesla or Space Exploration Technologies Corp., as SpaceX is formally known.
Later, Mr. Musk tweeted crying-with-laughter emojis in response to someone tweeting a story about his statement.
Tesla shares were down more than 1% in early Friday trading.
At the WSJ event, Mr. Musk made fun of the CEO title, saying it was made up. Mr. Musk has previously signaled that he doesn’t view formal corporate titles as set in stone. Tesla said earlier this year that Mr. Musk was adding “Technoking of Tesla” to his title.
Mr. Musk has a reputation for making eyebrow-raising statements on Twitter, where he has more than 65 million followers. Last month, he initiated a poll on the microblogging site, asking people whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla holdings, which voters backed. About two months earlier, Mr. Musk initiated a plan under which he has exercised some of his nearly 23 million vested stock options that are due to expire next year and sold some of his shares to cover tax withholding obligations. Mr. Musk on Thursday reported exercising more than 2.1 million stock options and selling around $963 million worth of stock to cover tax withholdings, according to regulatory filings.
Last month, the Tesla boss raised doubt about a deal between the car maker and Hertz Global Holdings Inc. when he tweeted that no contract had been signed in connection with the car-rental company’s announcement of a 100,000-car order. Last year, he tweeted that he thought Tesla’s stock was too high, sending shares lower.
Mr. Musk’s Twitter pronouncements at times have been a source of controversy. In 2018, he tweeted he might take Tesla private and had “funding secured” for the deal, spurring the Securities and Exchange Commission to sue him for fraud. Mr. Musk agreed to pay a $20 million fine—Tesla also paid $20 million—and relinquish his chairman title.
Write to Rebecca Elliott at [email protected]
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Appeared in the December 11, 2021, print edition as ‘Musk Publicly Jokes of Quitting.’
