About this episode
Elon Musk Biography Flash a weekly Biography.In the past few days Elon Musk has been everywhere from podcast studios to boardrooms and front-page headlines and as always, he is doing it in ways only Musk can manage. Yesterday Musk appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience and got the tech world buzzing by teasing a potential Tesla flying car. He hinted that he is getting close to unveiling a prototype Roadster “before the end of the year” promising that both the car and its tech are crazier than anything James Bond ever drove. Musk would not confirm specifics but called the coming reveal possibly the “most memorable product unveil ever,” a statement Business Insider immediately flagged for its typical Muskian audacity and potential to set social media alight. The appearance came on the heels of a little Twitter — or X — drama, after OpenAI’s Sam Altman posted an email showing he had paid a hefty deposit for the Roadster years ago, then asked for a refund and the email bounced, fueling fresh headlines about Musk’s transactional quirks.But if flying cars and viral refunds were not enough, it is Musk’s $1 trillion Tesla pay package and the threat to leave the company if it is not approved that is really making investors and the public sweat. According to Broadband Breakfast and CNBC, Musk told shareholders on this week’s Q3 earnings call that he needs about 25 percent voting control to confidently direct Tesla’s future, especially with its leaps into artificial intelligence and robotics. He raised the stakes by warning that he might depart if shareholder control is not assured for his ambitious plan, especially around the Optimus humanoid robot project, which he jokingly referred to as possibly building a “robot army.” Analysts expect Musk’s pay plan will likely pass at Tesla’s November 6 shareholder meeting, but controversies are swirling. Advisory firms like ISS and Glass Lewis oppose it, calling it “astronomical,” while a coalition of unions and watchdogs is running a campaign against Musk’s increasingly political behavior and his penchant for provocative social media posts, which they say are infecting the Tesla brand.Speaking of social media, this week Musk confirmed that X’s timeline algorithm will be fully AI-driven by November 2025. According to CXO Digital Pulse and CNBC TV18, X’s open-sourced algorithm will update every two weeks to reveal exactly how feeds are curated—a move that Musk says will boost transparency and further X’s ambitions as an AI-centric platform. Meantime, the media watchdog group RSF noted that Musk’s rate of attacks on news outlets is nearly three a day, double what it was a year ago, and critics are concerned about how his online conduct is affecting tech and media discourse.And of course there is always a touch of Musk unpredictability—he made headlines by criticising Bill Gates’s command of the hard sciences in direct conversation, a slight the Times of India immediately r
