Tesla is on a hiring spree after Elon Musk-ordered mass firings

By Kara Carlson | Bloomberg

Tesla Inc. is looking to hire nearly 800 new employees, three months after Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk hastily ordered the largest round of layoffs in the company’s history.

The roles have steadily popped up on Tesla’s careers page in recent weeks, with positions spanning artificial intelligence specialists to more run-of-the-mill service jobs, according to a Bloomberg analysis.

The pickup in postings has coincided with Tesla shares going on a tear, adding more than $223 billion in market capitalization in just the last 14 trading days. The stock marched higher in all but one of those sessions, when Bloomberg reported Tesla had decided to postpone the unveiling of robotaxi prototypes. Musk confirmed Monday that he’d asked for design changes and that teams working on the vehicle were granted extra time.

While 800 jobs are a far cry from the thousands of positions that Tesla eliminated this year, and publicly listed roles may not give a full picture of the company’s hiring, the new postings provide a glimpse into some of Musk’s priorities for the Austin-based company.

There were only three jobs posted on Tesla’s website in May, after the company missed vehicles sales expectations by the widest margin ever. The 20% sequential drop in quarterly deliveries spurred Musk to push for a commensurate reduction in headcount, Bloomberg reported, which would have meant dismissing roughly 28,000 of the more than 140,000 employees Tesla started the year with.

Now, many of the openings the company is looking to fill focus on AI and robotics for products including Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot. There are at least 25 jobs related to self-driving development or Autopilot, and at least 30 focused on Optimus. Tesla is reinforcing its years-long pursuit of autonomy as it prepares to unveil the robotaxi prototypes in October.

The hiring spree likely will add personnel back to areas where Tesla cut too deeply, in addition to reflecting Musk’s vision for the company. He’s said he now views Tesla as more of an AI, robotics and sustainable energy company than an EV company.

Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Disruptive Potential

Tesla doesn’t yet have regulatory approval to put driverless cars on the road, and its vehicles still aren’t capable of safely maneuvering without constant human supervision. However, many investors believe it will eventually bring the technology to market and have bid the stock up alongside Musk’s increasingly bullish claims.

The company’s long-term value will be derived from autonomous taxis and self-driving software, even if those products are years away, said Tom Narayan, an RBC Capital Markets analyst with the equivalent of a buy rating on Tesla shares. Autonomy is “going to disrupt the industry, and that’s enough,” he said.

In hiring related to Tesla’s AI and robotics ambitions, the company will have plenty of competition for the best candidates — including from other companies within Musk’s empire. The CEO acknowledged in April that the carmaker was having to boost pay to retain people interested in jumping to his latest startup, xAI, or defecting for OpenAI, which he co-founded but is now taking on after a falling-out years ago.

In mid-May, Tesla began to show the first hints of its workforce priorities when it quietly posted 17 roles for its Palo Alto, California, office related to AI and robotics. That number steadily climbed to about 130 positions on July 10. The San Francisco-area site is a relatively new location for Tesla, and opened as an engineering headquarters last year.

“Musk has been clear with the vision of where they’re going and how important that aspect of the business has been,” said Ben Kallo, a Baird analyst who recommends buying Tesla shares.

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