Gary Zhou 
Elon Musk said Friday that taking Tesla private is now “impossible” even though doing so could lead to further innovation at the electric car manufacturer.
The share price of Tesla is almost eight times higher than it was at the beginning of the year and, on December 21, it joined the S&P 500 as its fifth largest member.
Dave Lee on Twitter, Musk, reacting to YouTuber comments, said Friday that “engineering, design & general company operations” is a “fundamental limitation” to spending more time on innovation.
“Tesla public company duties are a much bigger factor, but going private is impossible now (sigh),” he tweeted.
The word “going private” applies to the transformation into a private entity of a publicly traded corporation through, for example, a buyout of private equity.
Tesla’s more than $600 billion market value will make it the biggest acquisition of all time.
In August 2018, in remarks that got him into trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk said he wanted to take Tesla private (SEC).
“Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured,” Musk tweeted at the time. The SEC argued Musk did not have a solid deal in place, and that he therefore made the statement knowing or having reason to know that it was “false and misleading.”
As a result, he was forced to step down as Tesla’s chairman.
Starlink IPO ‘likely’
In a later tweet, Musk said that Starlink, the satellite internet project by his aerospace company SpaceX, would “most likely” spin out from SpaceX and go public “once the revenue growth is reasonably predictable.”
Starlink is now in public beta and it costs $600 up front to be apart. The Internet is transmitted to parts of the US and Canada by around 900 satellites, and some users record speeds in excess of 200 megabits per second.
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