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Tesla's technical director and co-founder, JB Straubel, sold about $ 3 million worth of TSLA shares after exercising numerous options. We also learned that his presence around the Palo Alto office was "rare" in the last six to eight months.
Straubel has been with Tesla since the very beginning.
He is credited with the presence of Elon Musk. It is therefore technically prior to Musk within the company. Although, later, Musk was also co-founder because of his crucial financial contribution to the company since the very beginning.
For years, he has led several major technology programs for Tesla, including those related to batteries and power electronics.
Two sources that worked with Straubel recently told Electrek that its presence at Tesla's headquarters in Palo Alto has been "rare" in the last six to eight months.
One source even thought he was on leave, but the executive made an appearance in Tesla's last financial results call last month.
We asked Tesla about the situation, but the builder did not respond to our request.
Today, Tesla also asked the SEC to inform that Straubel had exercised 15,000 options and sold them on Tuesday for approximately $ 2.8 million:
The options were not expected to expire before 2022. Straubel still holds more than 300,000 shares of Tesla. As the leader of the company, Straubel would require disclosure if he was actually on leave.
Electrek's Take
Of all the things that have happened at Tesla over the last few months, learning from two reliable sources that JB was getting scarce today was without a doubt one of the most disturbing for me.
It has always seemed to be an important reason behind Tesla's long technological advance in the field of electric vehicles.
I was hoping for an explanation from Tesla, but they did not give an answer.
However, there could be many good reasons why he does not see himself much these days.
He could work more on other Tesla sites, such as Gigafactory 1 or the Los Angeles design studio or on another skunk production site. Or, he could work on another project with a small personal team, such as the mysterious materials recycling startup that has been linked to him and Tesla.
Or it could not be work-related and he might even step back for personal reasons.
Who knows? But his absence was important enough to worry some Tesla people who spoke to us.
We will try to monitor the situation over the next few months and report back. If you have more information, you can contact [email protected].
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