Even by Musk’s standards it’s been a mad time

As a new year dawns, the billionaire must decide how he wants to allocate brain time. What’s it going to be?

Standing before a crowd of thousands in the heart of Silicon Valley, Elon Musk shifted awkwardly as he endured a sustained chorus of boos. The comedian Dave Chapelle, who had brought him on stage at San Francisco’s Chase Center, reached for a one-liner. “Sounds like some of them people you fired are in the audience,” he said.

Musk started 2022 as the world’s richest person, leading its first $US1 trillion ($A1.49 trillion) carmaker and hailed as a visionary who might just develop microchips for the human brain, overhaul city transportation, or even colonise Mars, after leading the transformation of the global automotive sector.

The tycoon finishes it without that most expensive crown – overtaken by the French business magnate Bernard Arnault – but with a social network he was not certain he wanted. Tesla’s value has tumbled below $US400bn, after a market rout. Its boss is now arguably the most divisive leader in corporate America.

After appearing hundreds of times in these pages in 2022, Musk has been selected as the Times Business Newsmaker of the Year.

As a new year dawns, Elon Musk must decide how he wants to allocate brain time. Picture: Samuel Corum/AFP

Investors and analysts have long been concerned about the schedule of Tesla’s chief executive. Musk’s attention is unusually divided between several companies: he also formally leads SpaceX, his rockets and satellites business, as well as steering Neuralink, his brain chip venture, and The Boring Company, his tunnelling start-up.

The industrialist, who did not respond to an invitation for comment, has always been in a hurry. His conviction that it’s only a matter of time before the sun engulfs this planet is, perhaps, a helpful motivator. “I really am just trying to do the most amount of good with the time I have on this earth,” he told The New York Times in September 2020. “But I gotta do this without my brain exploding, going too crazy. Then it’s like, OK, if I’ve gotta allocate brain time to this thing, I’ve gotta take it from something else. What’s that going to be?”

On the last day of January, he began a course of action that would dominate his mind for the rest of the year: Musk, 51, bought his first shares in Twitter. He went on to quietly amass a 9 per cent stake in his social media service of choice, while publicly raising the prospect of a new platform. The investment would not be disclosed for another two months.

When news finally broke in the spring that one of Twitter’s most high-profile and controversial users had become its largest shareholder, it unleashed a wave of speculation about his intentions that has yet to subside.

Much of the confusion over the ensuing six months was amplified by Musk’s indecision. A man confident enough to predict a million Tesla robotaxis would be on the road by 2020, who reckons it will be possible to house a million people on Mars by 2050, changed his mind several times about whether to buy a website. He initially agreed not to pursue a takeover, before tabling a bid, then spent months pushing his lawyers to find a way of backing out, only to acquire Twitter in late October.

His hesitation was driven, at least in part, by market turmoi. After a brief retreat at the onset of the pandemic, global equities had spent almost two years soaring. The tide turned early this year, as central banks tackled rising inflation and Russia invaded Ukraine.

“Let’s slow down just a few days,” an anxious Musk texted Michael Grimes, his banker and a senior executive at Morgan Stanley, two weeks after Twitter accepted his offer. “It won’t make sense to buy Twitter if we’re headed into WW3.”

When Musk pursued Twitter, he had offered $US54.20 a share, an apparent reference to the 420 subculture of cannabis enthusiasts. Smiles raised by the nod quickly faded as the sell-off took hold and the reality of paying $US44bn for a social network during a tech rout hit home. By the time Musk and his partners did so, few were laughing.

The erratic approach Musk adopted during his pursuit of Twitter has remained his modus operandi since taking ownership. Features have been rolled out and unravelled, advertisers reassured and rattled, and staff defended and attacked. In one respect, he acted decisively. Musk sent the company’s former top brass packing almost instantly and waited all of eight days before halving Twitter’s workforce by sacking 3,750 staff.

While a few were invited to return, it was not long before hundreds more departed after an ultimatum from their new boss: sign up to an “extremely hardcore” working culture, or leave.

Musk moved to cut costs drastically amid serious questions over the impact of the takeover on Twitter’s business, which relied on adverts for 92 per cent of its revenue. He cited the danger of possible bankruptcy in early communications with his new employees. Brands from General Motors, the carmaker, to General Mills, the food conglomerate, paused spending while they waited to see what Musk’s vision of a freewheeling version of the platform would look like in practice.

As Twitter grappled with doubts over its future, Musk and his allies worked hard to shift focus to the company’s past. He claimed his platform amounted to a “crime scene,” and leaked a cache of documents related to internal decisions on content moderation to favoured journalists for a series of exposes he dubbed the Twitter Files.

For weeks, it felt as though each new day brought a new saga. Investors in other pillars of Musk’s empire grew increasingly alarmed about the distraction posed by its latest addition. “There is no TSLA CEO today,” Gary Black, managing partner of the Future Fund, a Tesla shareholder, tweeted in early December, urging Musk to hire someone to run Twitter.

Musk’s decision to offload stock worth almost $US40b in a year, cutting his stake in Tesla from about 17 per cent to 13.4 per cent, only compounded apprehension among its investors. He professed in April that he was done, but did so repeatedly again, most recently this month.

As the billionaire’s tumultuous stint at the top of Twitter continued, calls mounted for him to end it. Eventually, he reached for one of his favoured tools, and polled the platform’s users on whether he should resign. While the result was clear, 57.5 per cent of 17.5 million votes were cast in favour, Musk’s response was typically enigmatic. He cast doubt on the result, before pledging to heed users’ demand and step back as chief executive, but continue to run some teams, “as soon as I find someone foolish enough” to take the job.

Musk’s allies have quietly mooted the prospect of a new leader at Tesla, too. While he has yet to hand over day-to-day control of either business, the tenability of the status quo appeared to weaken as 2022 drew to a close. Whatever the goal – bringing electric cars into the mainstream, colonising Mars or running a social network – Musk will commit intensely. But he knows his capacity is finite. Investors do, too.

As a new year dawns, Musk must decide how he wants to allocate brain time. What’s it going to be?

The Times