Tesla investor looking to rein in Elon Musk drops his bid for a board seat, saying the EV maker's shareholders 'have been heard'

Ross Gerber said Friday that he had ended his run for a seat on Tesla's board.

Emma McIntyre / Staff/Getty Images

• Tesla investor Ross Gerber is no longer running for a seat on the EV maker's board.
• Gerber wanted to rein in Elon Musk and has been pushing to identify potential successors to the CEO.
• "As a friendly activist, I feel that shareholders have been heard," he said.

The activist investor pushing for Tesla to treat its customers better and start looking for potential successors for CEO Elon Musk has ended his campaign for a seat on the EV maker's board.

Ross Gerber announced his intention to run for a board seat earlier in February, saying it was time for Tesla to "grow up".  At the same time, he has repeatedly underlined he wanted to rein Musk in rather than boot him out as CEO. 

"After careful consideration, I've decided to withdraw my nomination for the Tesla board of directors," the CEO of investment firm Gerber Kawasaki said on Twitter on Friday. "As a friendly activist, I feel that shareholders have been heard."

"Looking forward to what Tesla has to show us next week," he added, referring to the tech giant's investor day on March 1.

The carmaker's shares suffered a record plunge in 2022 that wiped out nearly $700 billion in market capitalization. The selloff came as investors fretted about rising interest rates and Musk being distracted by his controversial revamp of Twitter – although the company's stock price has rebounded this year.

Usually, activist investors like Gerber try to take board seats in a bid to revive a company's share price by pushing out significant numbers of top executives. But he has repeatedly described himself as a "friendly activist" who wants to rein in rather than replace Musk.

"I'm not here to create problems, and I love the team at Tesla," he told Insider in an interview that took place a week before he ended his campaign. "But Elon is focused on another area of his life right now, and I care about Tesla's success."

"I'm not running hoping Elon will step down," Gerber added. "What I want is the opposite."

Gerber made improving Tesla's succession planning, communication, and customer service the three key goals of his board seat bid.

As of December 31, his firm held 440,000 Tesla shares, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Tesla has about 3.16 billion shares outstanding, according to Yahoo Finance.

Read more: Tesla lost its edge – and Elon Musk has no one but himself to blame

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