This is the final episode of Elon, Inc., and it comes at a fitting point in the story of the highly controversial entrepreneur Elon Musk. The podcast was launched around the time the South Africa native bought and rebranded Twitter, transforming a mainstream social media platform into something else entirely. Now, the podcast has found a natural conclusion with his full return to his companies, his exit from the Trump administration and the unprecedented governmental upheaval, mass firings and grim global consequences left in his wake.To reflect on this tumultuous timeline, David Papadopoulos gathers the best and brightest Elon Musk experts the Bloomberg newsroom has to offer—including Bloomberg Businessweek’s Max Chafkin and Bloomberg News Musk reporter Dana Hull, technology reporter Kurt Wagner and editor Sarah Frier—to go through the most memorable Musk stories from the past few years and to peek into the future of Musk’s empire and potential political ambitions. Among the stories we discuss are Musk’s outburst directed at advertisers at the New York Times DealBook summit, that time when Musk and President Donald Trump were hawking Teslas from the White House driveway and the right-wing multibillionaire’s “awkward hand gesture.” But in the end, is there any story that can top the rise and fall of the Musk-Trump friendship? Probably not. Musk spent hundreds of millions of dollars getting the Republican back in the White House, but their partnership didn’t make it past the summer. As Chafkin says, “that was obviously the Elon feud to end all feuds.” When it comes to looking forward, speculation abounds, but one thought in particular wins the group’s approval: Hull’s prediction that the South Africa native will one day make good on his promise to open a candy company. As the Elon, Inc. podcast rides into the sunset, future Musk coverage will find a home on the new Bloomberg podcast, Everybody’s Business, co-hosted by Stacey Vanek Smith and Chafkin.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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40:06
Will Elon Get Paid $1,000,000,000,000?
What do you give a man who has everything? $1 trillion of course. The news broke Friday that despite a seemingly waning interest in making cars and his alienation of many of Tesla’s customers, Elon Musk was offered a record-busting payday by the carmaker’s board. The catch? The South Africa native and richest person in the world (even before the $1 trillion) has to help the embattled automaker meet certain goals when it comes to company value and product development. In this episode of Elon, Inc., host David Papadopoulos gathers Bloomberg Businessweek’s Max Chafkin and Bloomberg News Elon Musk reporter Dana Hull to discuss the new pay package, its stipulations (such as growing Tesla’s market value to $8.5 trillion and delivering 1 million robots in ten years) and how likely it is that investors will approve the payout. Speaking of the Nov. 6 shareholder meeting, the crew is also joined by Bloomberg tech reporter Kurt Wagner to discus another investor matter: whether Tesla should invest in Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI (the conflict of interest practically writes itself). Also of note is the idea that a company like Tesla that’s increasingly turning to AI would invest in another AI company. Wagner tries his hardest to explain the situation and adds a substantial caveat: according to the proxy, the shareholder vote won’t be binding. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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32:11
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32:11
Tesla's Master Plan, Part Quattro
Labor Day is generally a slow news day in the US. But this year it happened to be the day Elon Musk chose to unveil Tesla’s “Master Plan, Part 4.” Since its first installment in 2006, the electric vehicle-maker’s future roadmap has been seen by some as a big part of the company’s identity. The latest version comes at a critical moment for the company. With Tesla sales down in many markets, tepid interest in new models and high-profile controversies often stemming from its voluble CEO, his right-wing politics and association with Donald Trump—the stakes are high. In this week’s episode of Elon, Inc. Max Chafkin invites Bloomberg automotive editor Craig Trudell and Elon Musk reporter Dana Hull to discuss the document and the state of Tesla. Most noteworthy in the report they say is a newfound focus on robots, specifically the humanoid autonomous Optimus model. As a matter of fact, Musk himself followed up on X and claimed in his usual hyperbolic fashion that around “80% of Tesla’s value will be Optimus.” But what about the cars? Trudell says he remembers the priorities around the previous big Tesla plan in 2023 (a year before Trump was re-elected) and how they have changed. “Right around that time, this was a company that was all about sustainable energy,” Trudell says. Now “it’s all about AI, it’s all about robots, it’s all about self-driving cars.” Hull takes things a step further and pinpoints what she says is a potential weak point for the company: “I think that Tesla has a real marketing problem where you have a CEO who is clearly bored of the car industry.” But more broadly, regarding the question of whether the company will be able to turn it’s struggling car business around, Chafkin has a theory. “It feels like there’s a little bit of an effort, maybe even a deliberate effort underway to untangle Elon from the future of Tesla,” he says.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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25:45
Forget the Cagefight: Are Elon and Mark Friends Again?
On this week’s edition of Elon, Inc., Bloomberg editor Sarah Frier sits down with Elon Musk reporter Dana Hull to discuss the latest news from the world’s richest man. They start with what was arguably the most dramatic development: X and Xai’s lawsuit alleging that Apple has unfairly favored artificial intelligence giant OpenAI in its app store. Hull says she isn’t convinced that it’s a matter of collusion, though. “It’s because ChatGPT is the most popular chat bot and Grok is not,” she says “Even though Elon keeps promoting Grok on X, like, most people don’t use it.” Speaking of OpenAI, the duo also discuss the news that Musk once courted Mark Zuckerberg as a partner to purchase Sam Altman’s AI rival. The deal was rejected by OpenAI but Hull and Frier address the question on everyone’s mind: weren’t the two tech billionaires supposed to be involved in a cage fight a few years ago? Finally, they focus on Ani, the new “digital companion” from Grok. Last week, Musk posted quite a bit about this suggestively dressed anime-style avatar, available for paid subscribers. Meant to spice up the user experience, can the product make waves outside a very specific demographic? Hull believes it might play into Musk’s idea of “unregretted user minutes” and that users who “develop a relationship with an online avatar” might find themselves spending quite a few minutes on the platform.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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14:32
In Elon's Silicon Valley, Drug Use Was Par for the Course
In this week’s episode of Elon, Inc., we conclude a series of “jealousy interviews” where we talk to authors of Elon Musk stories we wish we had written. This time, Bloomberg News Musk reporter Dana Hull chats with Kirsten Grind of the New York Times about her May exposé on the alleged campaign trail drug habits of a certain entrepreneur-turned-aspiring political kingmaker. The conversation covers not only Musk’s reported drug use (which he has denied) but the prevalence of drugs in Silicon Valley and across the tech industry as well. “All these tech guys think they can disrupt everything and they want to also disrupt their health,” Grind says. “So they kind of think they can medicate themselves a lot of the times.” Hull and Grind also talk about the broader themes of Musk’s salad days, back when he juggled not only a grueling schedule but private legal battles involving his many children.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Elon Musk’s sprawling business empire has granted the billionaire a degree of power and global influence that transcends the industries he’s reshaped. He is the leader of no fewer than six hugely influential companies, spanning electric vehicles to wartime communications, and their innovations could shape the fates of nations.
Musk is polarizing, confounding and inescapable. And he is the biggest business story of our time.
Each week, listen in as host David Papadopoulos convenes a panel of Bloomberg Businessweek journalists who are tracking Musk’s companies and the surprising ways they intersect. They break down the business mogul's latest moves and analyze what they could mean for us all.
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