Tesla chair Robyn Denholm on Thursday denied a Wall Street Journal report that said board members had reached out to executive search firms to find a new replacement for CEO Elon Musk.
The Journal had reported on Wednesday that Tesla’s board members had reached out about a month ago to several executive search firms to find the company’s new CEO, citing people familiar with the discussions.
Denholm said on X that the report was “absolutely false” and said that the EV maker’s board is “highly confident” in Musk’s ability to “continue executing on the exciting growth plan ahead”. Musk also said on X that the report was a “deliberately false article”.
Musk said last week he would cut back significantly on the time he devotes to the Trump administration and spend more time running Tesla.
Musk’s work at his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), where he has led efforts to cut federal jobs, has been one of the most controversial aspects of the Trump presidency, and his time away from Tesla has been an additional concern for investors as sales of its aging EV lineup have been on the decline.
His embrace of far-right politics in Europe has also led to protests against Musk and the company as well as vandalism at its showrooms and charging stations across the U.S. and Europe.
The board members met Musk and asked him to acknowledge publicly that he would spend more time at Tesla, the WSJ report said.
But it was unclear if Musk – also a member of the board – was aware of succession planning, or if his pledge to spend more time at Tesla has affected the efforts, the report added.
Tesla is at a crucial juncture.
Amid rising competition globally, Musk has pivoted from his promise of making a new affordable EV platform to rolling out driverless taxis and humanoid robots, highlighting Tesla’s future as an AI and robotics company instead of an automaker.
Much of the company’s valuation is based on that vision, and some investors believe Trump will help further it. Last week, federal regulators
eased rules for testing autonomous vehicles
, boosting Tesla’s stock.
Some Tesla directors, including co-founder JB Straubel, have been meeting with major investors to reassure them the company is in good hands, the WSJ said.
Activist investors have long accused Tesla’s board of lacking independence and failing to rein in Musk.
Denholm, hand-picked by Musk whose controversial pay package she defended, has also
drawn criticism for her own pay package
along with questions about whether that compromised her oversight of Tesla and Musk. Denholm has dismissed the allegations and a spokesperson has said her pay was fair.
In March, Denholm
sold about
$33.7 million in the electric vehicle maker’s stock, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The eight-person Tesla board, which also includes Musk’s brother Kimbal Musk and James Murdoch, son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, has been looking to add an independent director, the report said. (Reporting by Bipasha Dey in Bengaluru and Abhirup Roy in San Francisco; Editing by Alan Barona, Abinaya V, Christopher Cushing and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
