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Author | Ark
Musk, the top of the tech industry, want to retire?
This stems from his latest update, on the evening of December 10, Musk said on social media, "I am considering quitting my job and being an influencer full-time." What do you think? This remark has aroused heated discussion around the world, and even some netizens have ridiculed: the earth can no longer tolerate him?
Musk has just turned 50 this year, and in Chinese words, he has reached the age of knowing his destiny. During this time, his demeanor was intriguing — he sold nearly $940 million worth of Tesla stock the other day. Roughly speaking, since Nov. 8, he has sold more than 11.03 million shares of Tesla stock worth nearly $12 billion, a rarity in the world.
Is Musk really ready to retire? But for now, he has a few crazy ideas that haven't been completed: SpaceX to conquer space; the brain-computer interface project that will change human life. Even he had said that he wanted to help humans reach Mars, and this wish had not yet been realized. The super-rich man may not be able to live a simple life of a drunken fan.
Musk, crazy cash out more than 70 billion
Have the money to do what you want
Musk, who has just reached the top of the world's richest man, began to cash out wildly.
SEC documents show that Musk exercised 2165241 options at $6.24 per share on Dec. 9 and sold 934091 shares of Tesla stock worth nearly $940 million for $1,003 to $1,062. In addition, Musk also sold his last luxury home, fulfilled his promise of "no real estate", and rented a "mobile board house" in Texas with an annual rent of $50,000 (about 310,000 yuan).
Back on Nov. 6, Musk launched a poll on Twitter asking its 62.5 million followers if he should sell 10 percent of tesla stock. The poll results show that of the 3.5 million votes, nearly 58% support the sale. Since November 8, Musk has exercised about 12.86 million stock options and sold more than 11.03 million tesla shares worth nearly $12 billion (about 76.4 billion yuan).
Why is Musk frantically reducing his holdings? Speaking about the behavior, he once said on Twitter: "I don't receive a salary or bonus from anywhere, so the only way to pay personal tax is to sell shares." "It's true. In the coming months, Elon Musk will receive a tax bill that is not small.
We set the clock back to 2012. As part of his compensation plan, Musk received a stock option award of 22.8 million shares at an strike price of $6.24 per share. "I have a lot of options that will expire early next year, so a lot of options will be sold in the fourth quarter or they will expire." Musk once mentioned the matter at a meeting.
Under U.S. law, option income would be taxed at the highest ordinary income level, which is 37 percent plus a 3.8 percent net investment tax. Since Musk received most of the options while he was a California resident, he also had to pay an additional 13.3 percent tax to the California government. After the merger, the total tax rate will be 54.1%. So, at current prices, if Musk cashed out his options, he would face a total tax of up to $15 billion.
In addition, Tesla also revealed that Musk previously used stock as collateral to lend to financial institutions, and through the sale of shares, Musk is expected to repay part of the loan.
But it doesn't have to be that simple. According to the accountant's analysis, Musk's number of shares sold this time far exceeds the number required to pay the tax bill. Michael Burry, the archetype of the movie "The Big Short," tweeted that Musk doesn't need cash, he just wants to sell the company's stock. Michael Burry also hinted that Musk did not sell his shares to raise cash to pay taxes, but felt that Tesla's stock price was too high and wanted to cash out some of the gains. Today, Tesla's stock price has soared again and again, which can be said to have broken through the sky.
However, since the massive reduction of shares, Musk has also exercised options to buy Tesla shares at a low price. To date, he has 564,000 more shares than he did before the massive sell-off. Based on the closing price of $1,017.030 on December 10, Musk's net worth increased by $570 million (about 3.6 billion yuan) after the reduction. Can't help but sigh that the madman Musk's means are always beyond imagination.
Resignation is being considered
It turned out that Musk didn't want to go to work either
After the crazy cash-out, Musk began to have a new life plan.
On the evening of Dec. 10, he wrote on social media: "I am considering quitting my job and working full-time as an influencer. What do you think? ”
The tweet attracted the attention of netizens around the world, receiving nearly 20,000 responses within an hour of posting. Some netizens suggested to him that it was better to go to YouTube to do video or live broadcasting, but Musk said that he could not do this, on the grounds that the technology was too good. A self-media person with 84 million subscribers even threw an olive branch, saying he was willing to teach Musk how to get page views.
In fact, Musk is not only a super Internet celebrity, but also a young celebrity.
Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1971 to a mechanical and electrical engineer, a model mother, and a writer and nutritionist. Deeply influenced by his father, he was obsessed with science and technology as a child. The 12-year-old wrote the code for a game blastar himself and sold it for $500.
Later, after further study at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford, Musk developed the enterprise yellow pages website zip2 and the online payment software PayPal. In October 2002, when PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in shares, the 31-year-old earned his first $1 billion. Musk, who could have let go of himself and enjoy life, unexpectedly began to march into more incredible technology.
In June 2002, Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, amid skepticism and ridicule from the outside world. In the years since, Musk and the technical team have been working like crazy for many years, but have suffered three successive launch failures. Many years later, he said more than once, "At that time, I felt that I was useless, and I thought I was almost finished." Fortunately, SpaceX's fourth launch plan finally succeeded, allowing Musk to rise from the trough of his career.
Whether it's Tesla or Space X and brain-computer interfaces... These ultimate ambitions, which seemed bold, crazy, and even absurd, became a reality through his unremitting efforts. In Musk's words, don't talk to me about optimism or pessimism, I just want to get things done.
Extreme success stems from extreme character. Musk has an open and casual personality, and is a person who often vents his dissatisfaction with members of Congress, state governments, and regulators on social media. Because of this very different style of acting, Musk has circled many fans on social media. According to the Wiki News List, he currently has 65.5 million Twitter followers, ranking 13th in the world. His strong ability to carry goods is concentrated in: with fire outlet.
His performance in the currency circle can best reflect this. SEC filings show Tesla bought $1.5 billion in bitcoin in January. In order to push up the value of the currency, Musk not only changed his profile to "bitcoin" (bitcoin), but also released the big move of "Tesla accepts bitcoin as a payment method". Musk's cargo sent Bitcoin up 70 percent, earning $1 billion in just one month.
In May, Musk announced that Tesla would stop accepting bitcoin payments, and in the following two hours, the value of the currency fell from $55,000 to $45,000, and 6 billion funds were sold on the spot by 100,000 people. The reason he gave to the outside world was: "Bitcoin mining consumes too much electricity and energy, and is not environmentally friendly." ”
In addition, Musk posted only one "Dogecoin" word on Twitter, which pushed Dogecoin to soar by 50% on the day; when it was predicted that he would share online at Clubhouse (a voice chat software), the voice chat software instantly exploded, and an invitation code was even speculated to $100 on eBay... The list goes on. Apparently, this genius science maniac has mastered the traffic code.
From conquering space to brain-computer interfaces
Iron Man, 50, isn't crazy enough
However, Musk's campaign still needs to continue.
Just when he sold his real estate and cashed out his stock, his space company Space X reported a bankruptcy crisis. This Thanksgiving, Musk emailed Space X employees making it clear that the company could be at risk of bankruptcy.
He wrote in the email: "Unfortunately, as we conducted an in-depth investigation into the post-departure problems of our former senior executives, we found that the production crisis of raptor engines was much more serious than it seemed a few weeks ago. There is no way to whitewash all this. I was going to take a break this weekend, it's my first break in a long time, but not now, and this week I'll be on the Raptor production line all night and all weekend. ”
How important is the Raptor engine? Engines are the heart of all rockets, and every rocket company needs to master independent engine technology, while the Raptor engine can be said to be the epitome of Space X innovation, mainly used for the starship Starship Starship, whose main mission is to travel to the moon or Mars, which requires transporting a large amount of equipment, food and a team of up to 100 people.
In addition, the more realistic and urgent task taken on by the starship is to launch SpaceX's Type 2 (V2) "Starlink" internet satellite. The Starlink program has long been considered spaceX's main source of profits in the future, and Musk predicts that Starlink will generate up to $30 billion in revenue per year in the future, which is about 10 times the annual revenue of the rocket business. SpaceX's valuation of up to $100 billion is also largely based on the communication and service capabilities formed by StarLink.
For SpaceX, the advanced Raptor engine is nothing less than a "money-making machine" that carries all the hopes of SpaceX's profitability. If the progress of raptor engines in technology research and development and mass production slows down, or even stagnates, SpaceX will be affected to some extent.
Musk has a bigger ambition that has not yet been realized, that is, its brain-computer interface company Neuralink.
Neuralink, co-founded by Musk in 2016, is a medical research company specializing in brain-computer interfaces. The company uses invasive devices with chips to help treat brain damage and neurological disorders in humans, such as giving paralyzed or physically handicapped people control their phones and computers on their own consciousness alone. After its establishment, Neuralink did several years of research work in a low profile, and it was not until August 2020 that it attracted everyone's attention. At the time, Musk demonstrated the "brain-computer interface" technology on live pigs: the device enabled accurate predictions of the pig's behavior trajectory.
In April, Neuralink showed monkeys playing pong,000 game of table tennis with their minds. This monkey successfully implanted a brain-computer interface in the brain, and the racket is controlled through brain waves. Devices in the brain record information about neuronal firings as the monkey plays a game, learning to predict the actions it will make. Then came the news of the company's financing: In August, Neuralink announced the completion of a Series C round of funding, raising a total of $205 million (about 1.3 billion yuan). If nothing else, this will be the largest financing to date in the brain-computer interface space.
During this time, Musk has complained on social media that his current work is too tense, seven days a week from morning to night, hoping to have more free time. But the ambitious Musk has a lot of crazy ideas that have yet to materialize, and the 50-year-old may not be able to retire in the short term.
*The caption image is from Visual China.