Tesla CEO Elon Musk is facing the possibility of becoming the world’s first trillionaire if investors vote in favor of an unprecedented $1 trillion pay package on November 6.
In the company’s third quarter earnings call on Wednesday, Musk made the case that he wasn’t actually in it for the money but that he needed the voting power that comes along with it.
“I don’t feel comfortable building that robot army if I don’t have at least a strong influence,” Musk said, adding that he is looking for voting power in the “mid-20s approximately.” Musk currently has around 13.5% voting power, and the proposed plan would see him add 12% to that stake over the next decade.
Proxy advisors Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis have urged Tesla investors to reject the plan due to potential decrease in company value and concerns over the details of the proposal.
In the earnings call on Wednesday, Musk called both “corporate terrorists.”
The “robot army” in question that Musk is fighting for is the company’s Optimus robot project. In the earnings call, Musk said that Tesla would be unveiling Optimus V3s early next year, and called the robots “an infinite money glitch,” while making bold claims about their potential.
The Tesla chief said that the robots can achieve “probably 5x the productivity of a person per year,” and that one would make for an “incredible surgeon.”
“It won’t even seem like a robot. It’ll seem like a person in a robot suit,” Musk said. “It’ll seem so real that you’ll need to, like, poke it, I think, to believe that it’s actually a robot.”
The billionaire is known for his optimistic claims and timelines that don’t always play out as he expects.
The company delivered a record number of vehicles this past quarter, but that was not enough to save profits, which Tesla executives claim were dented in part by tariffs set by President Trump (whom Musk campaigned hard to get elected).
With the EV tax credit now also gone, Tesla is looking down a path were there won’t be as many record vehicle deliveries. Possibly prompted by this, the company has increasingly shifted its focus to AI and robotics to drive value for the company, and Wednesday’s earnings call was yet another example of that.
Musk’s ambitious self-driving plans
Tesla is expecting to get rid of safety drivers in its robotaxis, “at least in large parts of Austin by the end of this year,” Musk said in the earnings call.
Tesla currently operates its self-driving robotaxi service in two cities: Austin and San Francisco. In both cities, robotaxis include human safety monitors in case things go awry. Tesla’s robotaxi adventure so far has been riddled with regulatory scrutiny and legal headaches.
The service will also reportedly expand its operations to new locations. Tesla now expects robotaxis to be operational in eight to ten metro areas, including in Nevada, Florida and Arizona, by the end of the year. Those new markets will start off with a safety monitor for at least the first three months or so, Musk said.
Tesla’s biggest competitor in the robotaxi space, Waymo, is operational in five metro areas, and has plans to launch in five more.
Across the automotive world, autonomous vehicles were the hot topic of the day on Wednesday.
The company’s third quarter earnings call took place just hours after competitor GM unveiled plans to debut not just hands-free but also “eyes-off” electric vehicles by 2028, to much fanfare and investor applause. Musk spent most of the call assuring investors that the company’s artificial intelligence and autonomous driving initiatives were scaling “quite massively.”
Musk said that Tesla had achieved “clarity” on unsupervised full self-driving, and now feels confident in expanding Tesla’s production as fast as possible.
“At this point I feel 100% confident that we can solve unsupervised full self-driving at a safety level much greater than any human,” Musk said.
Musk also claimed that the autonomous Teslas will be better than humans at spotting empty parking spots, thanks to 360 degree vision and advanced intelligence.
“I’m confident in saying that Tesla has the highest intelligence density. When you look at the intelligence per gigabyte, I think Tesla AI is probably an order of magnitude better than anyone else,” Musk said.
During his ramblings, the billionaire also claimed that Tesla’s self-driving cars will, in fact, become too intelligent for their own good.
“It might get bored,” he said.
