Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he would be uncomfortable transforming the automaker into a world leader in artificial intelligence and robotics if he did not have voting rights equivalent to 25% of the company’s outstanding shares, nearly double what it currently holds, Reuters reported. .

Musk wrote on Wednesday on X, the social media platform he bought in October 2022, that if he doesn’t get enough Tesla stock “to be influential,” he would prefer to build AI-related products outside company, the largest car manufacturer. in the world by market capitalization.

The South African billionaire said he wants more influence over Tesla’s decision-making process, “but not so much” that his decisions cannot be overturned by other shareholders.

Musk sold Tesla shares for almost 40 billion dollars

Musk has said for years that Tesla will eventually build driverless, “fully autonomous” cars, and in October 2022 he unveiled Optimus, a humanoid robot developed by the company he runs. Tesla also developed a supercomputer called “Dojo” as part of Musk’s efforts to position the company in the technology sector rather than as a traditional automaker.

The billionaire’s new comments about the development of artificial intelligence and robotics products elsewhere appear to be a nod to xAI, the new artificial intelligence research company he launched last summer.

Tesla’s share price fell 2% after the announcement on “X”.

Musk now owns about 13 percent of Tesla after selling billions of shares in part to finance the acquisition of “X,” the former social network Twitter. Musk paid 44 billion dollars to become the owner of the social network.

The total value of Tesla shares, which Musk sold after deciding to buy the former Twitter, is estimated at about $39 billion.

The South African billionaire is pointing the finger at his ownership of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg’s company

In a separate post on X, Musk also said he would be happy to create a dual ownership structure at Tesla to get 25% of the voting rights, but was told that would not be possible after the company’s IPO.

Although in recent years the image of Tesla has become inextricably linked with that of Musk, he is not among the original founders of the company, joining the shareholders later.

“It’s strange that a crazy multi-class ownership structure like Meta, which gives control to the next 20+ generations of Zuckerbergs, is OK before an IPO, but even a reasonable dual class is not allowed after an IPO,” Musk complained, referring to the company founded and run by Mark Zuckerberg.

Companies with a dual share structure usually have two types of shares with different voting rights.

In most cases, this equity structure is designed to give the company’s founders or early investors more power than those who became shareholders after the company went public.