
Musk mulls taking Tesla private, Saudi sovereign fund builds $2B stake - fludlight
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-07/tesla-jumps-on-report-of-saudis-building-about-2-billion-stake
======
dang
All: please stick to specifics and don't go into MuskMania (the fever that
results when MuskLove meets MuskHate). That's always the same and therefore
off topic here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
chollida1
Honestly, I'm starting to think this is less about avoiding the public markets
and more about getting out of the crushing debt (8.65 in liabilities comming
due before the end of March 2019)that they have coming due in March of 2019.

The billion of debt coming due is convertible above a price of $360 and if he
can keep the price propped up will almost certainly force all bond holders to
convert into equity holders.

[https://seekingalpha.com/article/4191711-tesla-stealth-
capit...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4191711-tesla-stealth-capital-
raise?ifp=0)

I mean, think about this rationally, if it wasn't for the public markets Tesla
would already be bankrupt. Going private means giving up this access to
capital as well as having to come up with 9 Billion to fund debt commind due.

With stock you have something to bargain with when selling debt. Without it
you've lost a huge weapon.

Same for paying your employee's. No more tesla stock that appreciates each
quarter that you can sell as soon as it comes to you.

Also just did some digging on Tesla bonds and CDS...

At current levels, they imply a about a 30% chance of a Tesla default in the
next five years. It costs around $1.3 million to insure $10 million of bonds
against default.

And if Tesla went private and he funded it with debt he's looking at a rate
somewhere around the low teens from what Bloomberg is reporting which means
borrowing $58 Billion to finance this would cost aroudn $7.1 Billion a year in
interest payments at 12.5%.

And keep in mind he's paying that to cut off public markets access for raising
money, one of his best sources of cheap capital in the past 5 years.

~~~
radicalbyte
All of that is moot if it's the Saudi government buying in.

Tesla are by far the most advanced of all "green" car manufacturers; over the
next 7-12 years there will be countries banning petrol/diesel cars.

If Tesla can scale their battery and car production by that time then you
could be looking at a market share of Apple proportions.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
> over the next 7-12 years there will be countries banning petrol/diesel cars

I do not think so. At most, in that timeframe we will see countries starting
to ban sales of new cars which are not plug-in hybrids or better. And then
remember the average lifespan of a car today is ~20 years, you will still see
old pure petrol cars on the roads in 2050 is my bet. Just like you still see
old cars on the road today without any catalytic converters.

If you look at the electric car market today, you have lots of small cars with
reasonable-ish range, one sedan with good range and two pretend-SUVs (Model X
and I-pace) with good range.

No manufacturer anywhere makes a pure electric estate car (station wagon);
this is the most popular type of car in Europe. Nobody makes an electric
pickup; this is the most popular type of car in the US. Nobody makes an actual
SUV, Ford Expedition/Toyota LandCruiser/etc. style that can fit four mountain
bikes in the trunk and tow a 9000 lbs trailer. Nobody makes an electric
commercial vehicles of the type electricians, plumbers etc. drive.

What do all these have in common? Inherently terrible aerodynamics / poor
mileage and a relatively frequent need to go long distance trips. If you take
current battery tech and do some optimistic extrapolation of future
developments, you still end up with battery packs costing $50k+ and weighing
several thousand pounds. Which isn't going to work anywhere, nobody is going
to buy an $80k+ electric pickup when a diesel F150 starts below $30k.

But I do think we will see reasonable plug-in hybrid versions of these car
types. And Tesla will never be building cars with internal combustion engines,
so they're effectively locked out of what I believe will be the biggest part
of the market.

~~~
dorgo
Germany considers to ban diesel cars from cities to meet polution
requirenments of EU.

I consider to buy a new car at the moment. My favorites are electirc or
petrol. I don't even consider hybrids. I see no benefits. They have no upsides
of an electic car (quit, no exhaust, clean, simple). They are basically more
expensive/complex petrols with a slightly lower consumption.

~~~
outworlder
Not exactly. What you are describing is correct for things like a Prius, with
dual drivetrains. It is certainly not correct for cars like the Chevy Volt (or
the BMW i3), with the main engine being the electric one, and a gasoline
generator. This combination is less complex than a normal car – for one, you
can remove basically the entire transmission and hook up the eletric engine
directly (with maybe a reduction gear like a Leaf). The gasoline engine can be
much smaller and simpler as it is only driving a generator (and maybe not even
running all the time, depending on battery and workload).

Such a design is not as clean as a pure EV, but it is definitely better than
what we currently have.

~~~
davidgould
The Chevy Volt is not a serial hybrid like the I3. It has a very complex
transmission system to blend the gasoline engine and electric motor power. A
nice car, but not at all simple.

------
chollida1
Keep in mind that this position was built via the secondary market and not
from Tesla itself. And that the position size would be about 3 Billion, a
large but pretty ordinary size for a fund of their size.

They also put in $400 million into magic leap, ar large bet on Uber and about
$50 Billion into the Softbank vision fund that is throwing money around.

I think this puts them about the 8th largest shareholder of Tesla.

As an aside, with Musk's recent tweet I think he's going to get a pretty stern
talking to by the SEC about discomfiture and Reg FD.

Even if its true,

1) You've now used that bullet in your gun against the short sellers

2) Did it in a very dubious way, via twitter rather than RegFD disclosure.

3) will now have to answer questions about this "private takeover", ie where
is the money coming from? how long is it committed for?

For what? An SEC headache a momentary pop that was immediately erased?

The tweet caused a momentary pop in the stock price which was erased about 2
minutes after it popped. The market can be exceedingly good and correcting
itself.

Elon seems to be doubling down

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026879404905885697](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026879404905885697)

~~~
fossuser
Is it corrected? I'm still seeing it up $25.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
Today's peak TSLA price was $371.07 (through my provider) so it's yet to be
seen whether it will reach that again or close lower.

~~~
fossuser
Looks like it's up to $380 after hours.

------
Cshelton
The Saudi fund just made public that they own just under 5%, which is when you
have to publicly declare to the SEC your holdings. This usually happens when
there is an attempt at a hostile takeover. What Elon did was brilliant and he
just countered it by tweeting this out. He is willing to take it private at
the $420 price, probably way higher than the Saudi's were planning on. So now
it'll be a race to see who can obtain >50% of the shares. Elon has a massive
head start with how much he owns already, but the Saudi's fund is ridiculously
huge right now ($250B) and I'm sure they have the ability to pull in another
few hundred billion on demand. Kind of scary. Elon will need to find a stupid
amount of capital and fast to do this.

It's very smart on Saudi Fund's part... They would own the worlds largest
solar, battery, and EV producer. They could cover a desert in panels and sell
the cars and batteries across Europe/Asia, while providing the power as well.
They would once again have the largest control of the world's energy.

~~~
X6S1x6Okd1st
> They could cover a desert in panels and sell the cars and batteries across
> Europe/Asia, while providing the power as well. They would once again have
> the largest control of the world's energy.

Doesn't seem like you can reasonably charge a car in europe/asia from solar
panels in the middle east. You'll be dealing with some pretty nasty
transmission losses.

~~~
mschuster91
> Doesn't seem like you can reasonably charge a car in europe/asia from solar
> panels in the middle east. You'll be dealing with some pretty nasty
> transmission losses.

First of all, the oil reserves in Saudi-Arabia aren't going to last forever -
but they will need massive amounts of energy to maintain their cities,
especially for drinking water. Desalination is ridiculously expensive, and
water access will be _the_ war driver in the entire Middle East once climate
change really hits. Cover the desert with solar plants, the coasts with
desalination plants (and don't care about the brine) => control who gets the
electricity and/or the water, control the region. Saudi-Arabia is actually
already going pretty far in their fight for regional supremacy, that would fit
perfectly.

As for transmitting the energy to Europe/Asia, well... there's technology in
the works to synthesize gas (both gasoline and, well, gas) using electricity,
which can be fed into the existing gas pipeline infrastructure and thus sold
to the wide world.

~~~
Misdicorl
Wars about control of water will be centered around areas with fresh water
availability. The middle east doesnt have any.

If you have cheap desalinization capability, why would there be wars over
water?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Wars about control of water will be centered around areas with fresh water
> availability. The middle east doesnt have any.

More likely, they'll be centered around points of availability in areas of
relative scarcity.

There is, in fact freshwater in the Middle East, just not a lot. Which makes
what is there a potential source of contention.

~~~
Misdicorl
Fair point. Do climate models have the fidelity to predict desertification? My
intuition would be that the entire middle east will be devoid of water at 2
degrees hotter.

~~~
SuoDuanDao
As always, the question is 'with how much certainty'? At low enough certainty
I could predict what parts of the world will get dryer or wetter on the back
of an envelope, but there are a lot of unknowables like human activity that
would have to be included to make a quite reliable prediction.

------
tristanj
Trading of Tesla stock has now been halted following this news & Elon's
tweets.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/07/tesla-stock-jumps-on-
musks-t...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/07/tesla-stock-jumps-on-musks-tweet-
that-he-is-considering-taking-compan.html)

~~~
anomatopoeia
Interested in seeing where the funding is coming from at that valuation.
Potentially the biggest buyout of all time?

Other buyouts of such scale involved companies with huge cash flows/profits -
think RJR Nabisco, Hilton, TXU (big US utility).

Tesla of course is a very different animal. Hard to imagine any kind of
conventional financing working for this type of deal.

Beyond the Saudis maybe some other SWF or deep pocketed individual investors?

~~~
qaq
Why does is have to be beyond Saudis? it also could Qatar, China,UAE etc.

------
ryzvonusef
Taking Tesla Private

[https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/taking-tesla-
private](https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/taking-tesla-private)

~~~
ryzvonusef
Tesla reopens 10% higher after weighing decision to go private

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/07/tesla-says-no-final-
decision...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/07/tesla-says-no-final-decision-has-
been-made-to-take-company-private.html)

------
dangjc
It's a sign public equity markets aren't structured well that companies aren't
encouraged to think long term. The most successful companies in today's
markets don't even allow common shareholders to control the company, ie Google
and Facebook with their special classes of controlling shares. We might need
to reconsider changing laws around choosing board seats or requiring
shareholders to have minimum holding times in order to align incentives better
for the long term.

If public equity markets don't work, the alternative is more and more of
wealth creation happening privately, in startups funded by VCs, private
equity, or family owned businesses. The public won't get to participate.

~~~
marvin
That's a very sad thought, and unfortunately the way things are trending right
now.

------
writepub
Saudi money is dripping with blood - the kingdom's wealth and control is a
result of well documented massacre of dissidents, of Shias and of funding
terror and patronizing the Wahabis, especially against philosophies opposed to
the kingdom.

It's deeply disappointing to see Musk legitimatize the Sauds, who threatened
Canada with a 9/11 style attack just 24 hours ago

~~~
belltaco
FT which broke the story, said that the Saudis approached Tesla to buy a
stake, but Tesla refused, for whatever reason, probably financial, or maybe
didn't want to dilute the stock.

Musk can do nothing to stop anyone from buying or shorting Tesla shares,
that's regulated by the government.

So how is this true again?

>It's deeply disappointing to see Musk legitimatize the Sauds

Also, don't you know that the Saudis put $50 billion into Softbank's fund?

~~~
writepub
> Also, don't you know that the Saudis put $50 billion into Softbank's fund?

Anyone with a conscience would refuse Saudi funding, funneled via SoftBank or
directly. Remember how HN and googlers were up in arms against accepting
Pentagon money, this is a million times worse.

It is true that Musk is accepting a bailout from the Sauds, are you disputing
that?

Hence, it's disappointing that he's ignoring, or somehow rationalizing all the
blood shed by the Sauds

~~~
fmihaila
> It is true that Musk is accepting a bailout from the Sauds, are you
> disputing that?

How did you reach that conclusion? He declined to sell them new shares, so the
Saudis bought them on the open market. Tesla didn't get a dime. What bailout
are you referring to?

------
seren
Who would have predicted 30 years ago that a _Saudi_ sovereign fund would
invest in an electric car company ?

Symbolically that is a pretty potent signal.

~~~
creaghpatr
Hedging their bets, not the worst idea.

~~~
pmart123
Yep. I believe the Saudi sovereign wealth fund has divested from or has
mandates to divest from fossil fuel related investments.

[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/01/saudi-
arabi...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/01/saudi-arabia-plans-
to-sell-state-oil-assets-to-create-2tn-wealth-fund)

------
mephitix
Super coincidental that Elon announced he was thinking about taking the
company private right after this happened.

My guess is that they had run the numbers on taking the company private
before. Since the Saudis had approached Elon before and he denied their offer
(for whatever reason) he probably was upset that they acquired a stake through
secondary markets and tweeted their half-baked plan... (not a good course of
action IMO)

~~~
mandeepj
> Super coincidental that Elon announced he was thinking about taking the
> company private right after this happened.

Not super coincidental. It's incidental and on-purpose. What a day

------
endlessvoid94
This article mentions 4 times that it's unlikely Tesla will be able to pull
this off.

Not a single positive or optimistic note. Which is fine, but it's not as if
Bloomberg has no ability to influence market prices.

------
hn_throwaway_99
I get it, it's Musk, but this is still such an irresponsible way to announce
news of this magnitude. From a WaPo article:

The sudden announcement gained immediate criticism from former regulators who
suggested it may conflict with SEC rules for potentially market-moving
statements. Harvey Pitt, a former SEC chairman, told CNBC on Tuesday that
Musk’s tweets “might consittute fraud if any of the facts he disclosed are not
true” or if there was any indication that he had floated the proposal purely
to boost the stock price

~~~
B-Con
> to announce news of this magnitude.

Only if he's announcing news, which he likely is not. The method itself makes
it feel more like a muse and less like an announcement.

[edit]

Well, everyone seems to be taking him seriously...

~~~
sethev
The founder and largest individual shareholder of a corporation announcing
that they're considering taking the company private is definitely news.

~~~
jonknee
Small nitpick, he's the CEO, but not the founder. Tesla loves to forget
telling this part of the story, but it was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc
Tarpenning in 2003. Elon invested the next year, but didn't become CEO until
2008.

------
modeless
Can someone explain how Tesla can go private while still allowing all
employees and any current investor who wants to remain shareholders as Musk is
saying? AFAIK there is a threshold number of shareholders after which a
company is required to be public. You can't just declare that you're a private
company if you have thousands of members of the general public still holding
equity.

~~~
rrdharan
That threshold was raised from 500 to 2000 shareholders as part of the JOBS
act:

[http://www.lathropgage.com/newsletter-44.html](http://www.lathropgage.com/newsletter-44.html)

------
d2161
Just saw this today. I couldn't believe it because I saw this first on reddit
like a few weeks back, where a redditor thought all of Musk's weirdly negative
publicity stunts were to make Tesla less desirable in wallstreet's eyes so he
could make it private. I can't find the post now, but that's interesting it
turned out like this. I do agree that institutional investors have an
incentive to prioritize short term over long term gain. After all, you can
just sell your stocks, buy into another company and push for short term gain
over and over. Maybe it is better for Tesla to be private

------
rconti
Trading is halted.

[https://seekingalpha.com/news/3379457-tesla-trading-
halted-l...](https://seekingalpha.com/news/3379457-tesla-trading-halted-live-
updates)

~~~
froindt
"...Would create special purpose fund enabling anyone to stay with Tesla.
Already do this with Fidelity’s SpaceX investment."

Does anyone know more about how this is organized? My understanding (which
could well be wrong) is that organizations with over 500 owners must do normal
quarterly filings in the same way a publicly traded company would. Yet in
previous years I've searched and come up empty handed on SpaceX.

~~~
dragonwriter
I think the model is the fund is one investor in Tesla, many people are
investors in the fund. So Tesla doesn't have materially different reporting
requirements.

~~~
marvin
How does this skirt the accredited investor requirement in Sarbanes-Oxley?
Seems like a very obvious way to avoid it, and hence something that would not
be allowed.

------
thesimon
[https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/taking-tesla-
private?redire...](https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/taking-tesla-
private?redirect=no)

------
zaroth
Elon has just written an email to employees, also published on the site,
explaining how he thinks going private would be good for Tesla and very
generally how it could work.

It doesn’t appear to include any more specifics about where funding for the
opt-in buyout would come from.

TSLA resumed trading just before closing bell and closed at $379.57 up 11% for
the day.

[https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/taking-tesla-
private?redire...](https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/taking-tesla-
private?redirect=no)

------
paulpauper
I don't mean to rub it in , those people who said to short Tesla a couple
weeks ago were sure wrong. Last week Steve Eisman who rose to fame in 2008 by
betting against the housing market, shorted Tesla. That position is probably
at least 25% underwater now. Not only that, but Tesla losing money does not
mean it is insolvent, because it can keep raising money and most of those
losses are capital expenditures instead of operating losses.

~~~
winslow
While I don't necessarily disagree with your statement it is important to note
when Eisman and others shorted the housing market before the 2008 collapse
their positions also took big negative hits having to pay hundreds of millions
to hold their short positions. Obviously in the end of the housing market
collapse they made massive profits. Still very early in their TSLA position to
determine the winners & losers.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
If Tesla goes private, that _is_ the end for the shorts - there is no "after"
after that. Everyone who shorted will have to pay back their shares at $420 a
share (or whatever the final price ends up being).

~~~
xkjkls
That _if_ is a big if. Tesla is currently trading $40 under their supposed
acquisition price. That's not exactly high confidence from the market that
this deal will go through.

~~~
paulpauper
that is because nothing has been finalized. it can easily get there just based
on market momentum. Tesla gained $70 in a week. another 40 is not that hard

~~~
xkjkls
Wall Street loves free money. The stock was trading at $360 before this
proposal was announced, and only moved a third of the way to the purchase
price on the news. That's not implying investor confidence that this will
happen. Otherwise, plenty of people would be willing to load up on the stock
on the assurance it would be bought at $420.

------
csours
DISCLAIMER: I work for a Tesla competitor, any opinions are solely my own. I
am not a financial analyst, I may be a lizard-person. If I were Elon, I would
love it if I could take my company private and keep my fans as shareholders. I
would love it if I could "go private" and not have to actually buy back all of
the shares of people who want to go long anyway. I would love it if shorts had
no mechanism to short my company.

I would love it, but I don't know if I could find a real financial instrument
that allows for it.

(I posted this on another thread in case it shows up twice.)

------
jv22222
I hope he pulls this off. It would be excellent if he could get out of the
public company weeds, and get more brain bandwidth to focus on executing and
solving problems.

~~~
xkjkls
Why does that not affect other CEOs? I don't see Jeff Bezos complaining about
being a public company.

------
baxtr
I really don’t get the obsessions with going private. It used to be
everybody’s goal to go public, an IPO was one of the greatest achievements.
Musks wants to go private to have better control of “his” companies and to
prevent market pressures?

I think being a public company is good for many reasons, amongst other: the
_public_ can participate in the success of companies and for the company it
provides a great reality gauge. Maybe that’s what he’s afraid of...

~~~
Reedx
I don't get the obsession with going public. It has killed or derailed many a
great company. It's not exactly a good thing to constantly be chasing short
term profits and quarterly results over long term health.

The idea that companies should have the goal of going public is deeply
flawed/unhealthy, I think. Though it makes sense for some.

~~~
nickik
You do understand that going public does not automatically equal only valuing
short term profits right?

~~~
hndamien
Amazon managed to not chase them for some time while being public.

------
brisance
IMO it's just a PR ploy to prop up the price.

1\. How is Tesla going to raise capital if not through the public markets?
Would a PE firm lend them money at better rates (unlikely, with interest rates
going up)? They could've gone to Warren Buffett for another convertible-bond
deal but Musk just had to get into a pissing match with Buffett.

2\. Only Musk can sell a story about how $TSLA going private is good for
employees' stock options. It's the other way around; Tesla is losing employees
and the only way to get them to stay is to lock them in with an inflated
valuation. Ask anyone who has worked during the Dotcom bust.

3\. Using an after market hours price of $380, $420/share would be a premium
of 10.5%, or a market cap of about $72B. In the meantime the company is still
not profitable. And that Saudi sovereign fund investment is just a hedge
against oil prices, since Musk has said he will not give up his holdings nor
resign if the firm were to go private. His ego wouldn't allow him to do so,
either.

------
lanevorockz
Very simple, as the fight of big oil against tesla seems to have backfired as
Musk still has resources to buy back the company. It's better for them to
hedge their exposure to oil.

------
foota
What if the funding is the Saudi wealth fund and the stake they acquired was
to form a majority ownership?

Edit: this is probably not the case, sounds like speculation is of a hostile
takeover.

------
boznz
Good on Tesla. Markets are fickle and not conjunctive to long term planning
and investment

------
dylanhassinger
Very scary to see Tesla fall into the hands of a despotic nation that is
cracking down on free speech

[https://www.newsweek.com/saudi-arabia-
orders-16000-students-...](https://www.newsweek.com/saudi-arabia-
orders-16000-students-leave-canada-amid-diplomatic-row-1060547?piano_t=1)

~~~
gpm
This is making the very large assumption that it is the Saudi's financing the
deal...

------
mrfusion
What happens if I refuse to sell my share?

~~~
kylec
If you hold shares in a company that gets bought, your share is converted into
your portion of the proceeds. You can't refuse.

In this case, Elon wants to let current investors stay investors, so you
should be able to hold your share and it'll convert into whatever the private
equity equivalent will be.

~~~
dragonwriter
The private equity equivalent of a share of stock is...a share of stock.

------
giarc
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776)

"Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured." Elon

~~~
dudus
A pot joke borderline market manipulation. Just amazing. How do people get
away with this?

~~~
Voloskaya
Except it's likely not a joke?

~~~
dragontamer
You do realize that 420 is the police code for Marijuana, right?

Its a joke. The only alternative is that Elon Musk is manipulating the price
of his shares by tweeting private and sensitive information and therefore
needs to be fined by the SEC and possibly jailed for stock manipulation.

Therefore, its a joke. Because as stupid as Mr. Musk has been this past year,
I am sure he's well aware of the illegality of stock manipulation on American
markets.

~~~
Voloskaya
You do realize that 420 is also part of the set of real numbers before being
an alias for marijuana?

420 is also somewhere in the range of 15-20% higher than the current price,
making it a realistic offering price.

Also:

* [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026885883482365953](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026885883482365953)

* [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026890900885184514](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026890900885184514)

But thanks for your valuable input.

~~~
dragontamer
Since when is Twitter a public disclosure as per the law then?

Normally, announcements for stock buybacks, taking a stock private, etc. etc.
need to be filed with the SEC months in advanced and announced to the general
community.

~~~
adventured
As the CEO of Tesla, his Twitter account can act as a legal announcement
platform for the company, just as the Tesla site can. The SEC issued that
guidance five years ago.

The requirement to comply with Regulation FD is that investors should be able
to have some reasonable confidence that the source in question - the twitter
account - is a legitimate source for the company. The two Twitter accounts
that would clearly apply to would be @tesla and @elonmusk.

~~~
dragontamer
TSLA stock should have been halted before the news, not after it. (It seems
like TSLA is currently under a T1 halt: "News Pending").

[https://www.nasdaqtrader.com/trader.aspx?id=TradeHalts](https://www.nasdaqtrader.com/trader.aspx?id=TradeHalts)

If this isn't a joke, then that means Mr. Musk announced the news before the
T1 halt. Expect an SEC investigation soon. I'd definitely expect his actions
to be illegal, although I'm not a lawyer.

Its probably going to be a slap on the wrist / a relatively small fine, but
there's a proper dance to releasing information on the stock market to ensure
everything is fair.

------
saudioger
Musk would be much more tolerable if he followed the ancient rule of "put up
or shut up"

~~~
api
Come back when you led a team to build an orbital rocket with a reusable first
stage while simultaneously leading a team to build a luxury electric vehicle
with self-drive capability... and largely succeeded in both with a few
hiccups.

I think he's put up.

~~~
mhh__
Not many people have a spare billion dollars, however.

~~~
BookmarkSaver
Is that supposed to discredit him? He started with nothing. Nor is simply
having money anywhere near a guarantee of success in that industry.

~~~
saudioger
Nothing but a very comfortable safety net. I mean come on, his parents were
part of the group of people who fled South Africa after the end of
Apartheid... not exactly rags to riches.

He's done a lot, but "started with nothing" is seriously disingenuous.
Additionally: you don't have to "start from nothing" for your achievements to
be worthy.

~~~
api
If you were born in a first world developed nation and grew up above the
poverty line in your area, you are not a rags to riches story.

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danbrooks
Musk is only, what, 50 billion short of buying the company? Looks like another
PR stunt.

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Voloskaya
He never said he was buying Tesla himself though...

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xkjkls
Still needs to find someone with %50 billion though

