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During the relevant time period Tesla nearly went bankrupt, they had massive production delays and had set up assembly lines in tents, and Musk was sleeping in the factory. He could have been working at his other companies, namely SpaceX and OpenAI.
Sure, after that things were smooth sailing. But he could have spent his time on other stuff. If this ruling holds, Musk's current 17 or so percent of Tesla is worth about as much as his 40 percent stake in SpaceX given the current evaluation of >350 billion. There was a massive opportunity cost in spending that time at Tesla. Around that time he co-founded OpenAI, perhaps if he had more time to spend on OpenAI it would have been a better use of his time. Since the first ruling he founded a new AI startup that is currently worth over 50 billion dollars. In a very real sense, Musk could have created that much value in numerous other ways, his wealth wasn't necessarily as tied to Tesla as you might think.
More than that, it's unjust. When he made the contract it seemed absurd. He would take this horrible company and get rewarded for every 50 billion dollars he added to the market cap. It was a tremendous deal to the share holders, 1% of the company each time he increases it's starting value by over 100%. We know the opportunity cost of Musk's time. His other companies at the time included openAI, and SpaceX. There was in fact a massive opportunity cost, which is further demonstrated by xAI.
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