Elon Musk with his 4-year-old son.
Billionaire Elon Musk has been making headlines every day since he took over the microblogging platform Twitter in late October. The CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter, who is also the second-richest person in the world, has shared his opinions on succession planning and the engagement of his kids in his businesses. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the billionaire stated that he does not plan to hand his companies to his children in the near future.
The billionaire claimed he has people in mind who could run his businesses in the event of his incapacitation. However, he believes that it was wrong for executives to give their businesses or voting stock to their children.
"I am definitely not of the school of automatically giving my kids some shares of the companies, even if they have no interest or inclination or ability to manage the company. I think that's a mistake," he said during the interview.
He also stated that "succession" is one of the "toughest age-old problems". "It's plagued countries, kings and CEOs since the dawn of history. There is no obvious solution. I mean there are particular individuals identified as, that I've told the board, look, if something happens to me unexpectedly, this is my recommendation for taking over. So in all cases, the board is aware of who my recommendation is. It's up to them. They may choose to go different direction, but there is in worst case scenario, this is who should run the company," he told WSJ.
"The control question is a much tougher question and something that I'm wrestling with and I'm frankly open to ideas because it certainly is true that the companies that I have created and are creating collectively possess immense capability. And so the stewardship of them is incredibly important," he further noted.
Elon Musk shares 4-year-old son AE A-12 and daughter Exa Dark Siderael Musk, known as Y with Grimes. The pair have been co-parenting their children after splitting up in September last year. In addition, he secretly had twins in November 2021 with Shivon Zilis, the project director at his Neuralink company. He shares with his first wife Justine Wilson, 18-year-old twins Vivian Jenna Wilson and Griffin, as well as triplets Kai, Damian and Sax, who were born in 2006, as per People Magazine.