08/31/2026
Elon Musk explained why he has to control at least 25% TESLA vote - “I’m not going to build a robot army if I can be easily kicked out by activist investors. No way.”
“So, my concern for the future—because the Tesla thing is called sort of compensation, but really, it’s not about compensation. It’s not like I’m going to go out and buy a yacht with it or something.
It’s just that if I’m going to build up Optimus and have all these robots out there, I need to make sure we do not have a Terminator scenario and that I can maximize the safety of the robots.
I feel like I need to have something like a 25% vote, which is enough of a vote to have a strong influence, but not so much of a vote that I can’t be fired if I go insane.
But my concern would be creating this army of robots and then being fired for political reasons because ISS and Glass Lewis effectively fire me—or the activists at those firms fire me—even though I’ve done everything right. That’s my concern. And then I cannot ensure the safety of the robots.”