Baron Capital Supports Elon Musk’s 2025 CEO Performance Award

Baron Capital is in support of the proposed 2025 CEO Performance Award.  We believe it reflects the same principles of accountability, performance and alignment with shareholder interests that drove Tesla’s past success. The plan ensures that shareholders win first, and that Elon Musk continues to lead Tesla for many years to come.  We commend the Board for recognizing this and for working to retain Tesla’s most valuable asset. We believe the 2025 CEO Performance Award is right for the company, right for shareholders and right for the future.

Baron Capital has been investing in Tesla since 2014. Our shareholders and clients have benefited enormously from Elon Musk's vision, determination and execution. Tesla’s success and its future are inseparable from Elon.

Elon is the ultimate “key man” of key man risk. Without his relentless drive and uncompromising standards, there would be no Tesla. He has built one of the most important companies in the world. He’s redefining transportation, energy and humanoid robotics and creating lasting value for shareholders while doing it. His interests are completely aligned with investors. He owns 13% of the company.

We will be voting FOR.  

Supplemental Information

When my analyst team met with Elon Musk for two hours in our New York City office in 2010 during Tesla’s IPO roadshow, we thought his plans were more hopeful than plausible. Only one of our Funds made a small investment in Tesla at that time. But because Elon is a very impressive executive, we monitored Tesla closely for the next few years. Our research included several visits to Tesla's factories in Fremont, California and Reno, Nevada and frequent phone calls with Tesla executives including Elon.

In 2014 when sales of Model S began to increase significantly, I concluded we had been wrong thinking that Elon would not succeed.  From 2014 to 2016 Baron Capital purchased approximately $400 million Tesla shares at prices that were about 13X higher than Tesla's IPO price! Tesla's shares have since increased more than 30X our purchase price in 2014. Baron Capital has earned about $8 billion profits realized and unrealized from our Tesla shares for our clients and proprietary accounts.

We began to purchase shares in another Musk business, SpaceX, in 2017.  We have invested about $1.3 billion to date in SpaceX. We have since earned about $4 billion profits realized and unrealized on those SpaceX purchases. Our recent $338 million investment in Elon's xAI data center, social network and Grok AI, has produced about $340 million profits realized and unrealized to date.  Profits earned from Musk-controlled businesses represent about 24% of the $52 billion profits we have earned for clients and proprietary accounts since 1992 when we managed $100 million in assets.

Musk entities, due to their significant capital appreciation, now represent about 26% of our Firm's $44 billion AUM. We believe that Baron Capital could earn at least 5X the profits we have generated to date from the Musk ecosystem by 2035. If we are right, the beneficiaries of this success will be the estimated 1 million-plus working class and mass affluent, Baron mutual fund shareholders...their IRAs and 401(k) retirement accounts...as well as our institutional clients including endowments, foundations and sovereigns...and, looking through those entities, millions of additional individuals.

Further, we think the impact of our investments in Tesla is far greater than the amounts we manage directly. This belief is based on the fact that virtually every day when I am walking on the streets of New York City or in restaurants or traveling...people approach me to say, "Thank you, Ron. You have changed my life!" That is since, for the past twelve years, I have appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box three or four times a year and have spoken about Tesla...and lately SpaceX, too...and investors have obviously been watching and listening.

Tesla's bonus contract with Elon has been written to achieve an objective to get Robotaxi and Optimus robots to scale. If successful, Tesla could earn $400 billion per year in adjusted EBITDA for an extended period by 2035. That could produce a market capitalization for Tesla of over $8 trillion. We believe by 2045 Tesla value could quadruple its 2035 levels. Tesla’s current market cap is $1.5 trillion. Elon will only achieve his full bonus payout if those objectives are met. Tesla shareholders benefit before he does by reaching aggressive market cap objectives that few believe can be attained. We think it is unlikely at this time anyone, but Elon could accomplish those objectives.

We believe Elon is not only perhaps the most extraordinary engineer on our planet but an unusually competent businessperson. If he did not live in this country, we think it improbable there would be electric cars...reusable space rockets...Starlink broadband satellites...self-driving cars...giant storage batteries that can be added to America's electric utility grid quickly to provide required energy for AI data centers’ growth in our country...a satellite system protecting our homeland...super-fast manufacturing lines...AI digitizing physical processes...and who knows what else...  

We also deem it important that another element in Elon's bonus contract is succession. Tesla has 124,000 employees. The company hires only a small fraction of the millions of applicants from top engineering schools for Tesla engineering jobs. I found the comment of one Tesla Board member to me recently especially memorable: "Other AI businesses hire mercenary engineers. Tesla hires brilliant young engineers and trains them. Why would they ever want to leave?" Elon meets regularly with 30 to 40 engineers at a time in a room to discuss their work in various disciplines. And help solve problems they may be facing. Another Board member noted that when those employees leave the room, most are shaking their heads. The common refrain is that solutions to tasks they had thought unsolvable were outlined by Elon.  On the fly. "I can't believe what we are learning," was heard most often from the best and brightest.

It is rare that a senior executive challenges his prior assumptions recursively. Elon does. In my opinion, culture and people at Musk companies are unmatched at any publicly owned business I have visited in my 55-year career. That's because of him. From the large pool of awesome, talented engineers Elon is assembling, it should be possible to create an executive team to succeed Elon at some distant future point...if he ever decides he's done... If Elon ever leaves Tesla, we believe it's certainly not to sit on a beach somewhere drinking Mai Tai cocktails!  On Mars, maybe.  But a beach in the Caribbean?  No way.

Ron Baron
Founder 
CEO Baron Capital
November 3, 2025