Elon Musk is Okay to Lose Money Because of His Tweets

In a long interview with CNBC yesterday, Elon Musk discussed various topics including generative AI, the rise of remote work, his acquisition of Twitter, as well as the effect of his tweets on his businesses. Musk announced last week that he hired advertising veteran Linda Yaccarino as the next CEO of Twitter, but he looked back during the interview at what happened when he acquired the company last year.

“The analogy I was using was it was like being teleported into a plane that’s in a nosedive, headed to the ground with the engines on fire and the controls don’t work. That’s what it felt like,” Musk said. The new Twitter CEO went to lay off more than 6,000 employees in just a couple of weeks to cut costs, but Musk admitted yesterday that Twitter probably cut too deep into its workforce.

“There’s no question that some of the people who were let go probably shouldn’t have let go,” Musk said. While Twitter lost of a lot talent in a very short amount of time, Musk asked the remaining employees to embrace a “hardcore” work culture. The Twitter CEO also put an end to Twitter’s work-from-home policy, and he pointed out during that interview that people who can’t work from home such as frontline workers were the reason why working from home was “morally wrong.”

“I’m a big believer that people are more productive when they’re in person,” Musk said. “People should get off their goddamn moral high horse with their work-from-home bullshit, because they’re asking everyone else not to work from home while they do. It’s wrong,” Musk said.

"I'm a big believer that people are more productive when they're in person," Elon Musk said Tuesday on the work from home trend. "People should get off their goddamn moral high horse with their work-from-home b*******." https://t.co/MDrrx8azry pic.twitter.com/aHGF1gwHjP

— CNBC (@CNBC) May 17, 2023

When asked about his controversial tweets having a negative impact on Twitter and the other companies he’s managing, Musk had an unapologetic response. “I’ll say what I want to say, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it,” Musk said. This is quite unprecedented in a world where most big tech firms fear bad PR like hell, and where a company like Apple usually rehearses its keynotes to death.

In the interview, Musk also claimed that he was “the reason OpenAI exists,” having co-founded the company back in 2015. OpenAI went on to bring generative AI technology to the mainstream with its Dall-E and ChatGPT products. However, Musk now believes that Microsoft, which invested billions of dollars into OpenAI, has now taken control of the company.

Elon Musk claimed on Tuesday that he is "the reason OpenAI exists," citing his past investment in the entity, and that Microsoft exerts control over the AI company, an assertion strongly denied by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. https://t.co/yEU1gYLa2S pic.twitter.com/3RxJJKpPQb

— CNBC (@CNBC) May 17, 2023

In a separate interview with CNBC that also aired yesterday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella dismissed Musk’s comments about his company now controlling OpenAI’s future and technology. “Look, while I have a lot of respect for Elon and all that he does, I’d just say that’s factually not correct,” Nadella said. “OpenAI is very grounded in their mission of being controlled by a nonprofit board. We have a non-controlling interest in it, we have a great commercial partnership in it,” the Microsoft CEO added.