Elon Musk’s xAI and SpaceX merged in February, valuing the company at over $1.25 trillion. SpaceX is now preparing for an initial public offering (IPO).
One of the things that Musk has to do to get his trillion dollar pay package fully paid out from Tesla as CEO is to crank up Tesla’s market capitalization. Many people, including myself, would say that this is a pretty wildly unreasonable payout, that Musk, via the aid of a friendly board, is transferring a lot of shareholder assets to himself that a company acting in the interests of its shareholders probably would not. I’ve wondered if this is a gyration to advance that.
Elon Musk Threatened To Quit Tesla Before $1 Trillion Compensation Deal
To receive his full compensation reward, Musk will need to meet the ambitious goal of raising Tesla’s market cap from around $1 trillion at present to $8.5 trillion within a ten-year period.
It’s truly amazing how a guy almost universally beloved a decade ago has become his own biggest problem. Tesla would be humming along just fine with refreshing models on a cadence, some QA and without Musk.
So, I’d agree that he’s probably not doing a fantastic job of running Tesla as an auto company these days. However, if you consider Tesla to just be an auto company, its valuation is way too high. I think I heard someone put it along these lines a while back, that “Tesla is a solid auto company, but one valued at ten times what it’s worth.” The only way its present-day valuation can really be justified by an investor is if they think that the bulk of the company’s value is going to come from new things that it is doing and that those things will all be wildly successful, like robotaxi service and humanoid robots and all that. The value that would have to come to those for Tesla valuation not to already be wildly out of whack would have to be so large that what Tesla does as an auto company wouldn’t matter that much.
I can say this succinctly: Tesla is going to fucking collapse on a lot of very stupid retail investors.
I mean don’t get me wrong, people can stay irrational longer than you can stay insolvent, but Tesla legit makes me shake my head. First off, buddy clearly has major major mental problems, yet he clearly controls the board and runs this company as his own personal fifedom, committing all sorts of shit that in any other country and regulatory system would probably nearly have him behind bars. None of this is priced in.
Tesla hasn’t innovated from a car perspective since 2020. Everything has been smoke and mirrors and bullshit like the Cybertruck. FSD? I have a Tesla in the garage that couldn’t reliably drive itself automomously down my alley way, let alone in real world situations. Yet the autobots claim it’s driving their cars fully, which is legit absolute bullshit. FSD has gotten better, sure, but it absolutely needs pretty much full attention and thats nowhere close to changing. So was it full driving by the end of year 2016? 2017? 2018? 2019? In six months. 2020? 2021? 2022? 2023? 2024? 2025!!! 2026!!!
So I mean price in robots that are clearly being driven by people, empty promises, a ton of bullshit. Mental illness, infantile behaviour, let’s call a spade a spade, people can do what they want with their money, invest in what they want, but this stock is 100% hype and 0% actual substance. I don’t care what sort of methodology you try to argue it meets. It defies any sort of logic or rationality. So could it hit 20,000? Maybe. Could hit zero. You might as well throw shit at the wall at this point. How it’s worth more than Toyota though, is a sign of how bad this whole downturn really could be.
One of the things that Musk has to do to get his trillion dollar pay package fully paid out from Tesla as CEO is to crank up Tesla’s market capitalization. Many people, including myself, would say that this is a pretty wildly unreasonable payout, that Musk, via the aid of a friendly board, is transferring a lot of shareholder assets to himself that a company acting in the interests of its shareholders probably would not. I’ve wondered if this is a gyration to advance that.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2025/09/05/tesla-proposes-compensation-plan-for-musk-that-could-be-worth-as-much-as-1-trillion/
The only way he’s raising the market cap is by selling the company. Their market share is decreasing rapidly due to him.
It’s truly amazing how a guy almost universally beloved a decade ago has become his own biggest problem. Tesla would be humming along just fine with refreshing models on a cadence, some QA and without Musk.
So, I’d agree that he’s probably not doing a fantastic job of running Tesla as an auto company these days. However, if you consider Tesla to just be an auto company, its valuation is way too high. I think I heard someone put it along these lines a while back, that “Tesla is a solid auto company, but one valued at ten times what it’s worth.” The only way its present-day valuation can really be justified by an investor is if they think that the bulk of the company’s value is going to come from new things that it is doing and that those things will all be wildly successful, like robotaxi service and humanoid robots and all that. The value that would have to come to those for Tesla valuation not to already be wildly out of whack would have to be so large that what Tesla does as an auto company wouldn’t matter that much.
EDIT:
https://money.usnews.com/investing/stocks/tm-toyota-motor-corporation-adr
Toyota: Market Cap: $264.50B, P/E 11.08
https://money.usnews.com/investing/stocks/tsla-tesla-inc
Tesla: Market Cap: $1333.16B, P/E 354.33
https://money.usnews.com/investing/stocks/gm-general-motors-company
General Motors: Market Cap: $65.77B, P/E 24.93
I can say this succinctly: Tesla is going to fucking collapse on a lot of very stupid retail investors.
I mean don’t get me wrong, people can stay irrational longer than you can stay
insolvent, but Tesla legit makes me shake my head. First off, buddy clearly has major major mental problems, yet he clearly controls the board and runs this company as his own personal fifedom, committing all sorts of shit that in any other country and regulatory system would probably nearly have him behind bars. None of this is priced in.Tesla hasn’t innovated from a car perspective since 2020. Everything has been smoke and mirrors and bullshit like the Cybertruck. FSD? I have a Tesla in the garage that couldn’t reliably drive itself automomously down my alley way, let alone in real world situations. Yet the autobots claim it’s driving their cars fully, which is legit absolute bullshit. FSD has gotten better, sure, but it absolutely needs pretty much full attention and thats nowhere close to changing. So was it full driving by the end of year 2016? 2017? 2018? 2019? In six months. 2020? 2021? 2022? 2023? 2024? 2025!!! 2026!!!
So I mean price in robots that are clearly being driven by people, empty promises, a ton of bullshit. Mental illness, infantile behaviour, let’s call a spade a spade, people can do what they want with their money, invest in what they want, but this stock is 100% hype and 0% actual substance. I don’t care what sort of methodology you try to argue it meets. It defies any sort of logic or rationality. So could it hit 20,000? Maybe. Could hit zero. You might as well throw shit at the wall at this point. How it’s worth more than Toyota though, is a sign of how bad this whole downturn really could be.
Their autodrive shit is garbage though and literally no one wants a stupid humanoid robot.