Elon Musk said on Tuesday he plans to remain Tesla’s chief executive for at least the next five years, except if “I might die,” responding to rumours that he might soon step aside.
Musk also claimed, “There are people buying Teslas because Elon is crazy” at an event in Doha at Bloomberg’s Qatar economic forum.
The remarks came after weeks of talk about Musk’s future at Tesla. Reports first surfaced in late April suggesting that Tesla’s board had quietly begun looking for a new CEO as early as March.
On May 1, The Wall Street Journal and CNN said the board had reached out to several executive search firms to explore potential successors for Musk. They cited worries that he was too distracted, mainly because of his role at the US Department of Government Efficiency, and pointed to Tesla’s weak financial results in the first quarter of 2025.
Musk flatly denied those claims, calling the Wall Street Journal report “deliberately false” and “an ethical breach.” Tesla chair Robyn Denholm backed him up, labeling the stories “absolutely false” and expressing full confidence in his leadership.
Still, the rumors stirred fresh debate among investors and analysts over whether Musk could stay fully focused on Tesla while juggling other high‐profile projects and government work.
Musk says Europe is Tesla’s weakest market
In Doha, Musk tried to calm nerves by saying Tesla has “already turned around.” He labeled Europe as the company’s weakest market but said it was showing strength “everywhere else.” He stressed that having “reasonable control” of Tesla was the key to his staying on as CEO.
Musk also spoke out against acts of “violence committed against my companies” and threats aimed at him personally, calling them “on the wrong side of history.”
Earlier, Musk appeared at the Saudi‐US Investment Forum in Riyadh. There, he discussed humanoid robots, self-driving cars, his artificial intelligence venture xAI, and his vision for a drastically changed global economy.
He said he has cut back his involvement in the DOGE initiative in Washington to concentrate on his duties at Tesla.
Addressing investors and officials in Riyadh, Musk predicted, “We’re headed to a radically different world.” He forecast “tens of billions of humanoid robots,” describing them as helpers that could boost economic productivity enormously.
He explained that “the output of an economy is productivity per capita times population. With humanoid robots, productivity becomes virtually unlimited.” Musk suggested that advances in AI and robotics might one day bring about a “universal high income,” erasing scarcity so that everyone could access any goods or services they wished.
On the political front, Musk’s ties to former President Donald Trump have all but vanished. Trump’s inner circle has frozen out the tech billionaire. While Trump mentioned Musk online almost weekly from early February through March, he hasn’t mentioned him at all since April.
Musk’s absence from White House briefings and congressional newsletters marks a sharp change. Public polling shows his popularity has fallen sharply, even more than Trump’s among some groups. By late April, most voters said they wanted him out of government before his 130-day contract ends at the end of May, if not sooner.
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