Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter has plunged Twitter and Tesla into turmoil and there's no end in sight.
Last year, Gene Munster, managing partner at investment firm Loup Ventures, touted Tesla as a $2.5 trillion company in the making.
“I think we’re going to be a conversation for years to come,” he said at the time.
This year, the conversation turned sour as Tesla lost $650 billion in market value. The automaker’s CEO, Elon Musk, jettisoned some $20 billion worth of Tesla shares to support his $44 billion pursuit of social media platform Twitter.
Munster isn’t happy, warning that Musk’s preoccupation with Twitter—in addition to running SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink and the Musk Foundation—will have Tesla investors “frustrated.”
This isn’t the first time Munster has taken Musk to task. In a 2018 open letter to Musk, he blasted the billionaire for his outbursts at analysts and the media, as well as his making defamatory claims about a rescue cave diver.
“Your behavior is fueling an unhelpful perception of your leadership—thin-skinned and short tempered,” he wrote. “You might consider taking a Twitter sabbatical.”
Not a chance. Musk, now Twitter CEO, claims to be sleeping at the company’s San Francisco headquarters.
“Will be working and sleeping here until org is fixed,” Musk tweeted on Nov. 14.
Since Musk took over Twitter, advertisers have been fleeing the platform; there have been spikes in hate speech; about 50% of the company’s employees were cut, and many more have quit (Musk reportedly regretted the decision and pleaded for some to return).
Remaining Twitter employees were subsequently locked out of the office for several days, and the hashtag #RIPTwitter began trending on the site—even Musk posted a meme poking fun at the notion.
Meanwhile, over at Tesla, no one seems to be at the wheel. Lawyers argue that the board did not expect Musk to leave, even temporarily, with no one lined up as a successor.
But even if Musk has an idea who his successor is, Munster says, “there’s a light-year gap between identifying someone and having that someone take the job.”
