Elon's award is tied to growing Tesla's market cap - it's pretty transparent that he's just trying to ball-of-mud together everything he can to hit that target and grab the bag.

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digitaltrees an hour ago | parent | next [-]

No. He is making it an AI company. The prospectus makes that clear. Everything is in service of training and deploying AI. Twitter is data, distribution and marketing, space x is distribution with data centers and internet in space. Cursor is training data and hostile distillation.

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andruby 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What would it mean if SpaceX buys Tesla though? Does the combined market cap count? That would be wrong. Tesla buying SpaceX just for hist bonus and then rebranding to X would be classic Musk.

It's a game for him, but so ridiculous. While Tesla was pushing electrification and SpaceX pushing rapid rocket re-use I kind of tolerated Elon's antics, but since he got involved in politics and DOGE I can't bear it anymore.

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lesuorac 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> Does the combined market cap count? That would be wrong.

It counts and it's not wrong.

Sure, the Tesla award takes into account any M&A but growing a 2T company to 3T is a 50% increase. While growing a 1T company to 2T is a 100% increase so it's expected to be easier for him to hit his award targets with the companies merged as opposed to not merged.

	▲	xmprt an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		If we combine the market cap of the entire S&P500 we get close to 70T. That doesn't mean any of those individual companies are any more valuable or any of the investors are any richer. It makes no sense that Tesla shareholders would be ok with paying out a performance bonus just for M&A that doesn't grow the value of Tesla and would just dilute their shares.
	▲	andruby an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I understand Tesla acquiring other companies counting to the cap, but Tesla _being acquired_ by another company, why would that count?

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burnte 29 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> it's pretty transparent that he's just trying to ball-of-mud together everything he can to hit that target and grab the bag.

I agree, and most people do too, yet he'll get away with it. We're in the kleptocracy phase of the fall.

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itslennysfault an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I agree with this, but it seems so crazy to me. How can money be a motivator when you're that rich. I'm not even "rich" but I'm already at a point where money is far from my #1 motivator.

I LOVE puppies, but if I had a trillion of them the last thing I'd want is another puppy.

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scottyah an hour ago | parent | next [-]

It can't and it's just not. People use the word "money" for different things. He's not doing it for another bill or a number on some screens- neither are most employees of those companies. That's just projecting values on someone else.

The things they're trying to accomplish require extreme amounts of capital.

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davidguetta an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Assuming best intentions, making a colony on mars is gonna require money

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Jtarii 29 minutes ago | parent [-]

Not even Elon is delusional enough to truly believe a mars colony is a remote possibility.

	▲	amoss 13 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I don't think you can describe his beliefs using booleans like that: you have to use a numeric scale. It would be be correct to say: Elon would need a hell of a lot of ketamine to believe a colony on mars is a possibility.

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tavavex an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's not exactly like Cookie Clicker. Many people definitely like seeing the number going up, but for most people that get to that point of wealth, the goal is power that the money represents. A human being may struggle to relate to them, but they really are motivated by the sole desire to own and control everything.

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carlosjobim an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

You cannot get that rich without money being the motivator.

	▲	digitaltrees an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Yes you can. Money is a medium of exchange. Stock is a medium of exchange. But they buy the ability to effectuate your will in the world. If you have a vision of the world money, human capital, political power are not the measure of success or the goal. They are the instruments of executing a vision. Some people aren't motivated by money, they are motivated by reputation, or pathology.

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rlt 31 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That’s not how it works. There’s provisions to adjust the targets if there’s M&A.

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testing22321 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

His award is also tied to numbers of vehicles and robots sold.

So just increasing market cap won’t do it alone.

Even if he merged them, they still have to produce WAY more than they are now.