Is Elon Musk toxic for Tesla?

Plus: Dr. Pepper buys Peet's Coffee and the surprising stock merger implications of the Swift/Kelce merger

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Cheddar's Big Business This Week
August 28, 2025

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Elon Musk may not have founded Tesla, but he has become the company, and it’s become him. Now sales are plummeting, and while the share price is up 65% in the past year, investors are concerned about the close link between Musk, with his multiple projects and controversial political stands, and a company that makes cars and promises to create the next industrial revolution. To understand what Musk must do next, BBTW editor Peter Green spoke with Howard Yu, the Lego professor of management and innovation at IMD Business School in Lausanne.

Musk made Tesla $TSLA what it is, with his visionary talk and insane work ethic. But in 2025, is he still good for Tesla, or is he toxic?

That visionary talk and insane work ethic are okay in my mind. Nvidia $NVDA and Taiwan Semiconductor $TSM ( ▼ 0.39% ) are also insane on the work ethic front. What is less desirable is when the CEO’s focus is less about chasing purely scientific breakthroughs or unparalleled service to customers, but instead they get distracted by politics and don't seem able to focus. Then we have a problem.

What are the biggest challenges facing Tesla now, and how would you, as a management guru, advise Musk to handle them?

Find a successor. Delegate stuff he doesn’t like, just as he does with SpaceX. Build a strong bench of competent managers. If he’s Steve Jobs, he’ll also need a Tim Cook.

Do you think Musk can accept that he will need strong leaders at Tesla to guide the company forward? 

Nope. That’s his personality. Maybe he’ll learn. Again, he did so at SpaceX. But we haven’t yet seen him moving in that direction for Tesla so far. Perhaps he’s running into a wall when it comes to attracting top-level, world-class, big-name talent.

What’s the biggest challenge facing Tesla now?

Rolling out the robotaxi. If you cannot get Robotaxi, how can anybody trust you can do a humanoid robot? So that would be a not-too-distant-future test that Elon Musk is facing.

Does Musk have the detail-oriented enthusiasm needed to run Tesla as a car company?

He's just not interested in that part. But what he's interested in, of course, is AI, maybe potentially taking over OpenAI, continuing to accelerate Grok, and continuing to go into humanoids. So, in the ideal world, he would be able to delegate, just like at SpaceX, the day-to-day operations to someone to just run Tesla. 

But you never want your company to be led by an irreplaceable man? 

That is the Tesla conundrum: at some point, you need to pass the torch to the next generation. Other companies that stay relevant over centuries develop generational leaders. And Elon Musk, because of his personal insecurity, you can read this in his biography, he appears to feel that when he becomes dispensable, that threatens his own self-worth.

If Elon Musk has a stroke tomorrow, or just does too much Ketamine, is that the collapse of Tesla forever?

That would be a setback. Which are the companies that have gone through maturity and a new generation of managers? Microsoft has gone through that, Google has gone through that, Tesla has not. If something happened to Elon, even when he has put the company on a path to success, because of the sheer persona he imposed on the company, there's no way that Tesla’s not going to suffer for a few years. And if deep down in the organization, there's no one really able to figure it out as a CEO, it would be gone forever.

Okay. So buy, hold, sell?

Don't increase the exposure, but just hold.

This interview has been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.

—Peter S. Green

Poll of the week: The scent of Musk…

Is Elon Musk toxic for Tesla?

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Poll result: Intel inside?

We asked: Do you think it's a good idea for the U.S. gov't to take a 10% stake in Intel?

You answered:

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes! (20%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 No! (80%)

via @beehiiv polls

Big Businesses mentioned this week:

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This week, big business!

The usual suspects

  • Google, Apple, and the domino effect: Sometime soon U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta will decide on a remedy for Google’s illegal monopoly on Internet search and ads. At the heart of the dilemma is the $20 billion a year that Google parent Alphabet $GOOGL ( ▲ 2.05% ) pays Apple $AAPL ( ▲ 1.15% ) to make Google the default search engine on all Apple devices, directing many more billions of dollars in search ad revenue to Google. It sure looked like curtains for Google’s endless cash stream. But the impending dominance of AI results in internet search may have completely shifted the paradigm: Now it’s Apple that could see its pre-tax profit crash 7% and Google that could save 20% of its cash flow, freed from expensive arrangements that are suddenly yielding less demand. And that still might not help consumers escape the monopoly: Microsoft’s 20-year, $100 billion bet on Bing has only yielded a 7.65% market share to Google’s 86%.

  • Exxon’s Russia Play: Oil giant Exxon Mobil $XOM ( ▲ 0.53% ) has met with senior Russian energy officials to revive a joint venture to pump oil and gas from fields off Russia’s Pacific coast, the Wall Street Journal reports. Washington has allowed U.S. companies to talk with Russia about assets left there when sanctions were imposed after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Letting Exxon back in as part of a peace deal has been part of on-again, off-again talks with Russia. Exxon wrote off its Russia stake for $4 billion, and wants to get that back.

  • Nvidia Envy? The world’s most valuable public company did it again: Posting record sales  of $46.7 billion in the quarter ending in July, with net income of $26.4 billion up 59% from a year ago. Still, Nvidia $NVDA ( ▼ 0.66% ) shares dropped 3% in aftermarket trading as the company said the China-U.S. trade war could hit sales in the second half of the year, and as analysts worry the rush to build AI computing centers may stall, stymied by a lack of electrical power, and uncertain demand as dozens of new data hubs come online at once. That could crimp demand for Nvidia’s famous AI chips. CEO Jensen Huang said he sees companies spending $3 trillion to $4 trillion over the next five years on AI chips, and expects to capture about a third of that.

  • Peet’s coffee joins an original crowd. Look around these days and there is definitely a Dr. Pepper craze. Keurig Dr Pepper $KDP ( ▼ 1.45% ) is buying Peets for about $18 billion. Keurig Dr Pepper, the coffee and fizzy drink firm created in 2018 when the OG soft drink owner was bought by the original coffee pod maker, hasn’t been doing well, as the coffee industry is losing its buzz from a grande mix of factors: Soaring bean prices, up 49% so far this year, a climate-led 18% decline in Brazilian coffee production from last year, and a 50% Trump tariff on Brazilian imports. Keurig says it plans to split its coffee business from soda (it also owns 7-Up and Snapple), and complete the deal in the first half of 2026. Shares dropped about 18% on the news.

  • The Cracker’s back: Cracker Barrel $CBRL ( ▼ 3.64% ) is bringing back the old guy. A streamlined design for the roadside rest stop’s iconic logo went over about as well as New Coke, with President Donald Trump urging the chain to “admit a mistake,” and revert to the old logo. “They got a Billion Dollars worth of free publicity if they play their cards right,” Trump posted on his own social media platform, for 42,000 likes. “We said we would listen, and we have. Our new logo is going away and our “Old Timer” will remain,” Cracker Barrel tweeted, to 227,000 likes. Shares in Cracker Barrel dropped 9% on the new logo’s announcement, but are now 4.4% higher than before the kerfuffle began.

  • This clock don’t Tok: The deadline for Chinese-owned TikTok to find a U.S. buyer will probably be pushed back from mid-September, as talks to find a new owner drag on. Trump says he has “very substantial American buyers” lined up, and the White House also launched its own TikTok channel.

  • You Got Amazoned: Corporate employees at Whole Foods are losing their supermarket discount and other perks, including four weeks of annual work-from-home, under a plan that will see them get new job offers from Whole Foods parent Amazon $AMZN ( ▲ 1.07% ) . Since Amazon paid $13.7 billion for Whole Foods in 2017, sales are up more than 40%, but market share is down as Walmart $WMT ( ▲ 0.03% ) and Costco $COST ( ▼ 0.48% ) grab more grocery dollars.

The short stack

  • Hot Soon? After a failed partnership with McDonald’s $MCD ( ▲ 0.01% ) , Krispy Kreme $DNUT ( ▼ 0.97% ) is taking its oversugared donuts to big box retailers, including Costco $COST ( ▼ 0.48% ) and Walmart $WMT ( ▲ 0.03% ) (them, again?!), in an effort to rebuild the brand. Shares have dropped 66% in the past year, and sales dropped 13.4% in the last quarter. Analysts at JP Morgan Chase $JPM ( ▲ 0.47% ) downgraded Krispy Kreme this week, as shares dropped 3.49% on Wednesday. The problem bedeviling Krispy Kreme? Getting their donuts to the store while fresh, at a reasonable cost. That failure killed the McD’s partnership. As the JP Morgan analyst noted: “The reality is this donut has nearly all of its appeal when eaten freshly fried & glazed within minutes of being made.” 

  • Who said Love can’t buy you money? It wasn’t Phil Collins, was it?

Actually he said ‘you can’t hurry love.’ But this gif is worth including, regardless. Note the too-large double-breasted suit, please, alongside the mimed slap-bass. #Wow

  • Still, news that Taylor Swift was engaged to Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce boosted shares in some surprising stocks. Signet Jewelers $SIG ( ▼ 3.76% ) rose more than 7%, Ralph Lauren $RL ( ▲ 1.02% ) , whose clothes both were wearing in photos was flat, while American Eagle Outfitters $AEO ( ▼ 0.34% ) , with which Kelce’s own sportswear brand Tru Kolors has a collab going, rose more than 8%. Meanwhile this is every unmarried guy in a three-year-plus relationship on hearing the news:

  • If you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em: Frontier Airlines’ $ULCC ( ▼ 1.67% ) offers to buy discount rival Spirit $FLYY ( ▼ 9.42% ) have been rejected so many times, that it’s now angling to steal Spirit customers by adding some 20 routes aimed at Spirit's main markets, including Ft. Lauderdale. Spirit is still trying to restructure, but that’s looking a lot more like a garage sale, with planes and gates up for bids. Spirit had projected a $252 million profit this year, but it’s already lost $256 million from mid-March through June.

  • Can Hooters make a comeback? That’s the aim of a Hooters franchisee named Neil Kiefer, who’s trying to convince a Chicago bankruptcy court to let him manage the chain’s 100 or so bankrupt locations. Kiefer says he wants to downgrade the licentiousness and make Hooters “family-friendly,” while still keeping it “delightfully tacky.” Part of his plan: Banning bikini bottoms and lengthening the servers’ shorts by about an inch.

The media mirror

  • Search results: AI startup Perplexity says it will pay media companies each time its search engine uses a news article to answer a request. The micropayments will come from subscriptions to Perplexity’s Comet Plus. Publishers want to be paid for letting their words train AI models, and last year Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones, part of News Corp $NWSA ( ▼ 0.61% )  sued Perplexity for copyright infringement. The perplexity arrangement could signal a new model to provide compensation for content. Hey Grok, should content be free? “A hybrid makes sense: free access to basic or essential content, with premium options for specialized or high-effort work. Total freedom sounds nice until you realize someone’s gotta pay the bills.”

  • Apple Radio goes out-of-app: Apple’s $AAPL ( ▲ 1.15% ) six curated radio stations will be available on non-Apple devices for the first time, as the tech giant tries to catch up with Spotify $SPOT ( ▼ 0.75% ) . Apple’s market share of digital music subscribers in the U.S. fell to 25% at the end of last year from 30% in 2020, while Spotify’s share grew to 37% from 31%. The deal will put the Apple stations on TuneIn, which has 75 million monthly active users.

Trumplandia

  • The Apprentice: Fed Chair Edition: “You’re Fired!” That’s what Donald Trump said to Fed governor Lisa Cook, but Cook says there’s no valid grounds to fire her, and on Thursday sued Trump in federal court to block her sacking. The suit sets up a landmark legal battle over the independence of the Fed, and the limits of executive power. Trump wants to people the Fed with his own supporters, who would presumably do his bidding on interest rates and bank regulation.

  • Tarifftown: Remember that $550 billion Pres. Trump said Japan would invest in the U.S., with the White House directing how it’s spent, and the U.S. keeping 90% of the profits? Commerce Sec. Howard Lutnick told Fox’s Laura Ingraham on Monday night that the deal will be signed this week, and Japan’s investment would be “at the hand of Donald Trump, and he can go invest it.” But that’s not what the Japanese said when the deal was first agreed to. Tokyo’s chief trade negotiator said Japan would offer a mix of investment, loans, and loan guarantees, with no promise that the investments would be new, or under Trump’s control.

  • The Gilded Age: There’s a new crypto lifeline for Trump’s troubled Trump Media & Technology Group $DJT ( ▲ 0.2% ) , which is down 50% since he took office. On Tuesday, the Truth Social owner said online exchange Crypto.com will seed a new joint venture with $1 billion in CRO tokens, a form of cryptocurrency it created, while Yorkville Advisers will provide a $5 billion line of credit to acquire about $6.4 billion of CRO tokens. It’s not clear where either the line of credit or the profit will come from, but it’s notable that Trump Media said it will buy $150 million in CRO tokens, while Crypto.com will purchase $50 million in Trump Media stock, the only part of the transaction that appears to be made with cash.

Elon’s world

  • Tenth times’ a charm: A tenth launch of SpaceX’s 403-foot-tall Starship rocket made it successfully to orbit, where it released a bunch of dummy satellites, as engineers carried out a stress test of the often-problematic launch vehicle. Musk wants the Starship to take a payload to Mars next year.

  • Not as I do: While Musk has been suing Sam Altman for turning OpenAI into a for-profit corporation after Musk helped launch it as a non-profit, he quietly changed the status of xAI from a Nevada public benefit corporation into a simple for-profit firm. Meanwhile, on Monday, Musk ratcheted up his attack on OpenAI, alleging in a lawsuit in Texas that Apple’s partnership with OpenAI to power AI on Apple devices is a “monopolistic collaboration” that disadvantages xAI’s Grok. Apple's 65% share of the US smartphone market and OpenAI's 85% share of the AI chatbot market makes a collaboration between the two monopolistic, Musk said.

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Peter S. Green is a veteran reporter and editor who has spent more than two decades covering business and finance from Eastern Europe to New York City, and has worked for Bloomberg News, The New York Post, The New York Times and The Messenger. He lives in New York City and is always looking for the next big story. Email him here.