Newly minted Twitter owner Elon Musk isn’t bashful about touting his working hours and dropped a now deleted tweet early Monday morning letting the world know he’s got his nose to the grindstone for the sake of his new business endeavor.
“I’ve been at Twitter SF HQ all night,” Musk tweeted early Monday morning. “Will be working and sleeping here until org is fixed.”
Musk famously made similar claims back in 2018 when he was camping out at various Tesla factories amid struggles to boost production volumes of the Tesla Model 3 sedan.
But this time around, Musk’s bragging is raising the ire of some Tesla investors who feel the world’s richest human and Tesla CEO is focused on Twitter to the detriment of his electric vehicle company.
Why is Elon Musk being sued?
On Wednesday, Musk testified in a lawsuit that alleges, per The Associated Press, that his $56 billion performance-based stock option grant is excessive and was negotiated by a compensation committee and approved in 2018 by Tesla board members who had conflicts of interest due to personal and professional ties to Musk.
Musk addressed his time management habits in Wednesday testimony, but also commented on recruiting Tesla engineers to help out with his efforts to revamp Twitter.
“I expect to reduce my time at Twitter and find somebody else to run Twitter over time,” Musk said, according to CNBC.
A plaintiff’s attorney asked Musk about a CNBC report that he had authorized at least 50 Tesla employees, mostly Autopilot engineers, to help with his work at Twitter, now that he owns the social media company.
Musk said he only called on Tesla employees to assist him at Twitter on a “voluntary basis,” and to work “after hours” at Twitter, per CNBC. He said that no Tesla board member had called him to say it is not a good idea to use Tesla resources for one of his other, privately held companies.
Elon Musk says he can run multiple companies
Besides Twitter and Tesla, Musk also runs SpaceX and two smaller startups, Neuralink and The Boring Company.
After Monday’s tweet about his all-in schedule at Twitter, Musk followed up with a qualifier, tweeting that “I have Tesla covered too” and said he’s working a split-schedule that includes spending a few days each week focused on Tesla, per Reuters.
“Tesla investors are going to be frustrated,” Gene Munster, managing partner at venture capital firm Loup Ventures, told Reuters. “He’s probably going to spend more time on Twitter than any Tesla investor feels comfortable about.”
Musk may be saying he’s got all of his leadership responsibilities covered but Tesla shares have dropped by 50% since early April, when he disclosed he had taken a stake in Twitter. Sales of Musk’s own Tesla shares — totaling $20 billion since he disclosed his Twitter stake — have added to the pressure, Reuters reported.