Depose the DOGEfather? Spike the space genius? Eject the engineer behind the whole company?
So says the Wall Street Journal. And “no,” says both the Tesla board and Elon Musk.
Get ready for a fight, because Musk got hopping mad over this report last night from the Murdoch operation. According to their sources, the Tesla board got nervous about Musk’s time and attention spent on DOGE and the White House, not to mention the damage that Musk’s high profile in the Trump administration was doing to the brand. They began a quiet search for a new CEO, the WSJ reported late yesterday, and still may be pursuing it:
Board members reached out to several executive search firms to work on a formal process for finding Tesla’s next chief executive, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Tensions had been mounting at the company. Sales and profits were deteriorating rapidly. Musk was spending much of his time in Washington. …
The board narrowed its focus to a major search firm, according to the people familiar with the discussions. The current status of the succession planning couldn’t be determined. It is also unclear if Musk, himself a Tesla board member, was aware of the effort, or if his pledge to spend more time at Tesla has affected succession planning. Musk didn’t respond to requests for comment.
If this sounds vaguely familiar, it should, because we’ve seen this movie before. It roughly parallels the Steve Jobs arc at Apple, albeit without the political engagement. Jobs had brought in John Sculley as CEO to help guide the firm and build shareholder confidence while Jobs focused on innovation. When that innovation didn’t immediately pay off — and when Jobs created friction within the company due to his driven personality — the board bounced Jobs in favor of Sculley.
Of course, the movie we saw before didn’t end well for Sculley. The lesson that the Tesla board should take from that (assuming the WSJ story has any merit) is the disaster that resulted. Without its chief engineer and innovator, Apple became almost an afterthought in the tech industry. Jobs launched NeXT while Apple struggled for the next decade, until the board acquired NeXT to give Jobs back control of Apple. And the rest is history, as one might say, given the incredible innovation and revolutionary technology launched by Apple after Jobs’ return in 1997.
But does the story have any merit? The WSJ report notes that “Tesla didn’t provide a statement before publication,” but does not explain how long the WSJ gave them to respond. The updated story notes that both the board and Musk have since denied it, with Musk going public with his frustration last night. Musk hints that the board did respond before publication and the Tesla board explicitly accuses the WSJ of ignoring their response:
It is an EXTREMELY BAD BREACH OF ETHICS that the @WSJ would publish a DELIBERATELY FALSE ARTICLE and fail to include an unequivocal denial beforehand by the Tesla board of directors! https://t.co/9xdypLGg3c
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 1, 2025
Earlier today, there was a media report erroneously claiming that the Tesla Board had contacted recruitment firms to initiate a CEO search at the company.
This is absolutely false (and this was communicated to the media before the report was published).
The CEO of Tesla is…
— Tesla (@Tesla) May 1, 2025
Just because denials have been issued doesn’t mean the story is false. However, if the WSJ got denials before initial publication — or if they didn’t give a reasonable amount of time for Tesla and Musk to respond to the story — that’s a sign of some chicanery in play. Even Politico raised a subtle eyebrow at the initial disclaimer:
The Journal’s reporting comes as Tesla has suffered a sharp drop in sales and revenues in the first quarter of 2025 — compounded by concerns over the impact of Trump’s tariffs and on Musk’s leave from the company while he’s taken up the mandate of remaking the federal government with the Department of Government Efficiency.
In its story, the Journal reported that Tesla’s board of directors narrowed its efforts to one major search firm but that it was unclear what the current status of the purported CEO search planning was. The article was updated early Thursday to note that “Tesla didn’t provide a statement before publication.”
That certainly sounds like weasel wording.
On the other hand, it also comes just after Musk declared his willingness to put DOGE aside and return his focus to Tesla:
Musk told investors in a call last week that he would be spending more time with Tesla, taking a step back from his work with DOGE to focus on the car maker. Musk has been at the head of the company for two decades, and it’s just one of the billionaire’s several business ventures.
It doesn’t take much imagination to think that the Tesla board — the representatives of the shareholders — made their displeasure known to Musk at some point. Whether that came in the form of a talent search, or perhaps a suggestion that they may start one, may not ever be fully known. But what we do know is that Tesla stock has fallen 30% since the start of the year, and that would make any corporate board as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. The biggest drop took place from mid-February into March, which also fits with the timing laid out in the WSJ.
It’s not too difficult to imagine that Tesla’s board delivered some form of ultimatum to Musk — although it’s equally possible that Musk himself has worked with the board all along and planned to come back if the market cap declined this precipitously. And thus far, the return announcement seems to be helping. Tesla stock has risen eight percent this week, and 55 points over the last ten days or so.
If the WSJ got the story wrong, expect to see more from Musk in coming days. They should have at least waited to run the story until the Tesla board had given their response, and should have included that response in the original publication if the board responded as they claim. Or perhaps Musk will want to focus on business rather than politics in the coming weeks, which may be the best use of his time — especially at Tesla.
