Elon Musk ‘not on Wikipedia’ jibe after Twitter user says he’s not Tesla founder

Tesla chief executive officer (CEO) Elon Musk disagreed with a tweet “reminding” the users that the tech billionaire was not the founder of the automotive and clean energy company. Vaibhav Sisinty, founder and CEO of GrowthSchool, tweeted, “Elon Musk was not the founder of Tesla. He acquired it.”

A user replied saying Elon Musk invested in a “glorified kitset car manufacturer with unworkable” technology, changed the business model, forged new technology and created a wholly new industry. 

“That is what founders do,” the user added.

Responding to the tweet, Musk, a prolific Twitter user himself with over 83 million followers, wrote: “Not even close to that. It was a shell corp with no employees, no IP, no designs, no prototype, literally nothing but a biz plan to commercialize AC Propulsion’s Tzero car, which was introduced to me by JB Straubel, not Eberhard. Even name ‘Tesla Motors’ was owned by others!”

Musk had a similar clarification during a TED appearance earlier this month.

In a series of tweets, Musk said that he would have been the only founder of PayPal if filing a shell company constitutes “founding” it.

“If filing a shell corp constitutes “founding a company”, then I’d be the only founder of PayPal, since I filed the original incorporation docs for http://X.com (later renamed PayPal), but that’s not what founding means,” he wrote.

“They say history is written by the victors, but not on Wikipedia if the losing party is still alive & has lots of time on their hands!” he added, taking a jibe at Martin Eberhard, co-founder of Tesla, Inc.