Elon Musk Replacement Rumors: Billionaire Also Had Unceremonious Exits From PayPal, OpenAI

Elon Musk has split his time in recent months between his role as CEO of Tesla Inc. TSLA and his role as senior advisor to President Donald Trump in the White House.

The billionaire’s political activities in the U.S., plus his views on Europe, were controversial, to say the least. Tesla’s car sales plummeted and the company’s board of directors reportedly opened a search to replace Musk as CEO.

The Austin, Texas-based company has since denied the report.

The South African-born billionaire is no stranger to inter-company disputes. Musk co-founded X.com, one of the first online financial companies, in the late 1990s. It later merged with Peter Thiel and Max Levchin‘s Confinity to form PayPal.

Musk was ousted from his position as CEO by the company’s board of directors after he pursued aggressive changes to the product and infrastructure and pushed for the company to retain its X.com branding, according to the Washington Post. Thiel replaced Musk as CEO of the company until its acquisition by eBay.

More recently, Musk has formed a bitter rivalry with OpenAI, an artificial intelligence company he co-founded in 2015 with Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever and others. Musk left the company in 2018, citing disagreements with others about its non-profit status at the San Francisco-based company. Musk has since founded his own AI startup, xAI. Altman’s OpenAI and Musk have traded lawsuits recently and publicly feuded.

And while in the White House, Musk is said to have had verbal clashes with both Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

These episodes, past and present, suggest a familiar pattern: Musk's drive to shape the future, whether in finance, AI, or electric vehicles, often brings him into conflict with collaborators and boards. Still, Musk does not appear to be likely to leave Tesla in the coming months — betting market Polymarket gives a 15% chance of Musk leaving as CEO in 2025.

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