Tesla and Elon Musk are pushing back against a report claiming the company’s board launched a search for a successor to the mercurial CEO last month as he spent time away from the company leading President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.
The Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday that the board had reached out to executive search firms to initiate a formal process to identify potential replacements for Musk as the electric car maker grapples with slowing sales, shrinking profits and a bruising year on the stock market.
The report, which cited sources familiar with the matter, triggered an immediate reaction from investors and sent Tesla’s stock down as much as 3% in after-hours trading on Robinhood before recovering some of the losses.
Musk reacted to the Journal report, writing on X: “It is an EXTREMELY BAD BREACH OF ETHICS that the @WSJ would publish a DELIBERATELY FALSE ARTICLE and fail to include an unequivocal denial beforehand by the Tesla board of directors!”
In a subsequent post, Musk wrote: “WSJ is a discredit to journalism.”
Tesla board chair Robyn Denholm, who has sold more than $150 million in company stock since December, also took to the social media platform