Tesla Says Report Its Board Is Looking to Replace CEO Elon Musk Is False

The vehicle maker said it backs Musk’s leadership while denying a report it’s board was in touch with recruitment firms.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk at the White House in Washington on Mar. 11, 2025. Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

Electric vehicle maker Tesla on May 1 denied a report that its board had sought to replace Elon Musk as its chief executive amid a plunging stock and declining sales.

“Earlier today, there was a media report erroneously claiming that the Tesla board had contacted recruitment firms to initiate a CEO search at the company,” Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm said in a statement on social media platform X.

“This is absolutely false (and this was communicated to the media before the report was published). The CEO of Tesla is Elon Musk, and the board is highly confident in his ability to continue executing on the exciting growth plan ahead.”

Denholm’s statement followed a report from The Wall Street Journal that claimed board members at Tesla had started contacting various executive search firms to find a new CEO roughly a month ago.

Tesla’s board is made up of eight people, including Musk, his brother Kimbal Musk, and James Murdoch, the son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

The Journal, citing people familiar with the discussions, reported that the company’s board met with Musk and told him he needed to publicly acknowledge that he needed to spend more time at Tesla.

The tech entrepreneur did not object, the Journal said.

Musk has been working closely with the White House in his role leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), though his status as a special government employee is set to end on May 30.

The billionaire businessman took aim at the report in a statement on X.

“It is an EXTREMELY BAD BREACH OF ETHICS that the WSJ would publish a DELIBERATELY FALSE ARTICLE and fail to include an unequivocal denial beforehand by the Tesla board of directors!” he wrote.

In another post, Musk wrote that the “WSJ is a discredit to journalism.”

The Epoch Times has contacted The Wall Street Journal and Tesla for further comment.

Tesla Revenues Slide

The report follows a volatile few months for Tesla, including anti-Musk backlash over DOGE’s cuts to the federal workforce and attacks on Tesla showrooms and charging stations across the country. The latter briefly prompted President Donald Trump to consider labeling such perpetrators as domestic terrorists.

Tesla has also seen its revenues decline and its stock price plunge.

The company said its revenues slid by 9 percent, to $19.34 billion for the January–March quarter, down from $21.3 billion a year earlier, while its automotive revenues plunged 20 percent, to $14 billion from $17.4 billion last year.

Tesla had been expected to report revenues of $21.24 billion in the quarter, according to analysts polled by FactSet.

The company blamed “uncertainty in the automotive and energy markets” and “rapidly evolving trade policy,” which it said has adversely impacted the global supply chain and cost structure of Tesla and its peers.

However, it has also seen weakened demand—Tesla sales declined 13 percent in the first three months of 2025, with the company reporting deliveries of 336,681 globally. That’s compared to the 387,000 cars the electric vehicle maker delivered a year ago.

Musk said last week that he would be cutting down on the time he devotes to his role in the Trump administration, as most of the major work at DOGE has been completed. Instead, he will be spending more time running Tesla and his other companies, he said.

“The large slog of work necessary to get the DOGE team in place and working with the government to get the financial house in order is mostly done,” Musk told analysts on a conference call, noting that he still planned to spend around 40 percent of his time on DOGE.

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles confirmed on April 29 that Musk is no longer working from the White House and is not as “physically present as much as he was.”

“He’ll be stepping back a little, but he’s certainly not abandoning it. And his people are definitely not,” Wiles told the New York Post.

Andrew Moran contributed to this report.