What do brain implants, space rockets and electric cars have in common?
Elon Musk, Tesla’s billionaire chief executive, said he was open to the possibility of entering his various businesses under the same umbrella, similar to Google’s corporate reorganization five years ago.
“Good idea,” Musk tweeted after being launched the idea by David Lee, an investor at Tesla and YouTuber. On Twitter on Wednesday, Lee suggested that Musk create a holding company called “X” that would be Tesla’s parent company, SpaceX rocket builder, The Boring Company tunneling company and brain implant startup Neuralink.
It is not clear whether Musk is seriously considering the move or just pleasing one of his 41 million Twitter followers, as he usually does.
Regardless, there is a notable precedent – Google formed a new parent company called Alphabet in 2015 to house its Internet service search and operation mechanism alongside its other businesses, such as the autonomous car unit Waymo and the intelligence company Artificial DeepMind.
There are many lingering questions about how Musk would undertake a similar restructuring, such as whether Company X would be publicly traded like Tesla or privately traded like SpaceX, The Boring Company and Neuralink.
But Lee says the move would make it easier for the world’s second-richest man to oversee his existing ventures and start new ones. In addition, he noted, Musk already owns the domain name of X.com, an online bank he founded in 1999.
“This is not a movement focused on increasing the market value or the share price,” said Lee on Twitter. “Instead, this is a movement focused on creating the structure for Elon to be able to continue to make big bets for humanity and to have time to manage them.”
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. The electric car maker’s stock price rose about 2.7 percent to $ 663.61 at 11:45 am