Major Tesla shareholder calls for Musk resignation

Tesla’s third largest individual shareholder, Leo Koguan, is calling for Elon Musk to resign as CEO after he sold more company stock worth AU$3.6 billion last week.

Kougan, who owns around AU$15 million in Tesla shares valued at up to AU$5.4 billion, believes Musk’s move suggests he is no longer committed to the electric vehicle carmaker amid his roughly AU$66 billion takeover of social media platform Twitter.

After doing a public poll, Musk announced that he will step down as Twitter CEO “as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job”.

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“Elon abandoned Tesla and Tesla has no working CEO,” Kougan tweeted.

“Tesla needs and deserves to have working full-time CEO.”

Musk has come under fire among investors for selling his Tesla stocks, with some speculating that he’s using the funds to invest in transforming Twitter as a hub for free speech without bot and spam accounts.

The entrepreneur – who also owns SpaceX, the Boring Company, and Neuralink and Open AI – is no longer the world’s richest man after acquiring Twitter and a subsequent sharp fall in the Tesla share price, down by almost 18 per cent in the past month. According to Forbes, Musk’s net worth sits at about AU$233 billion.

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Tesla was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003, before Musk took over as CEO in 2008.

It’s now the world’s best-selling electric vehicle car brand led by the Tesla Model 3 small sedan and Model Y medium SUV, alongside Model S and Model X flagships.

The American carmaker is also rolling out its Semi delivery truck to commercial customers – albeit five-years after its debut – and is still yet to deliver its promised second-generation Roadster coupe and controversial Cybertruck electric ute.