Elon Musk said on X on 11 November that SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, “instead of putting $12B into Tesla for a 1/4 of the company to help me take Tesla private, instead invested the money in WeWork”. Musk added: “That was dumb”. The post, at 08:49 UTC, replied to an X user a day after SoftBank reported a July-to-September loss of about $7.0 billion.
The $12 billion figure is Musk’s account; the 2018 documents we read do not contain it. At Tesla’s 10 November close of $379.78 and 3,952,757,946 shares outstanding in its latest 10-Q, a quarter of Tesla is worth about $375.3 billion, 31 times the $12 billion in Musk’s post, by our arithmetic.
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The key insight: As we read it, Musk has put a price on a road not taken: his post says Son could have had a quarter of Tesla for $12 billion, a stake worth about $375.3 billion at the 10 November close by our arithmetic, while the 2018 documents we read name the Saudi fund and a 2018 Bloomberg report places Son-Musk talks in April 2017.
Musk was replying to a post by the KatieMiller account at 02:26 UTC that read “Taps the sign”. It quoted a WSJbusiness post saying SoftBank “reserved enough gas turbines to generate the power of six Hoover Dams” and that “It cost the company billions of dollars in losses”. Its image was a screenshot of Musk’s own 6 November post: “SoftBank is defaulting on their turbine orders”.
SoftBank has rejected that earlier claim. Asked about it at the 10 November results briefing, Chief Financial Officer Yoshimitsu Goto said: “this is simply not correct at all. There is no such default”, according to an Investing.com transcript, as we reported in our piece on SoftBank’s quarterly loss.
Musk’s new post gives no date, valuation date or terms for the $12 billion. It does not say when SoftBank made the WeWork investment he refers to. Musk’s post had 75,809 views at 09:38 UTC, per the fxtwitter API.
A quarter of Tesla: the $12 billion in Elon Musk’s 11 November X post (his account) against 25% of Tesla’s market value at the 10 November 2026 close, from 3,952,757,946 shares in its latest 10-Q and a $379.78 Nasdaq close. The market value and multiple are our arithmetic.
What Was Posted on X
@KatieMiller I remember that time when Masa, instead of putting $12B into Tesla for a 1/4 of the company to help me take Tesla private, instead invested the money in WeWork.
Elon Musk posted this at 08:49 UTC on 11 November in a reply to the KatieMiller account. He wrote that Masa, instead of putting $12B into Tesla for a quarter of the company to help him take Tesla private, invested the money in WeWork, and called that dumb. The $12 billion figure and the account of the choice are Musk’s; this piece checks them against the 2018 record.
The KatieMiller account posted this at 02:26 UTC on 11 November, reading ‘Taps the sign’. It quotes a WSJbusiness post on SoftBank’s gas-turbine reservations and attaches a screenshot of Musk’s 6 November post saying SoftBank is defaulting on its turbine orders. Musk’s post above replies to it.
What the 2018 Record Shows
Musk’s 13 August 2018 Teslablog post, Update on Taking Tesla Private, explained his “funding secured” tweet with the Saudi fund, not SoftBank. It says: “Going back almost two years, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund has approached me multiple times about taking Tesla private”.
The post says: “I left the July 31st meeting with no question that a deal with the Saudi sovereign fund could be closed”. It adds that Musk was “having discussions with a number of other investors”, without naming them. His 24 August 2018 post, Staying Public, says he “worked with Silver Lake, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley” and that Tesla would stay public.
The SEC’s complaint of 27 September 2018 says Musk had three or four meetings with “representatives of a sovereign investment fund” from January 2017. The two blog posts and the complaint we read do not mention SoftBank or Son.
SoftBank does appear in a Bloomberg report of 8 August 2018. Bloomberg reported that Musk and Son “held talks last year about SoftBank Group Corp. investing in Tesla Inc., including potentially taking the electric carmaker private”, citing two people with knowledge of the discussions.
Bloomberg said Son and Musk met in April 2017, and that the talks “failed to progress due to disagreements over ownership”. It said Musk proposed a structure giving him disproportionate control through stock with supervoting rights, according to one person. A SoftBank spokesman declined to comment, Bloomberg said. The part of the report we could read gives no dollar amount.
The WeWork Side
WeWork’s S-1 registration statement, filed in August 2019 under the name The We Company, says that since 1 January 2017 the SoftBank entities “have invested or committed to invest in us and our subsidiaries approximately $10.65 billion”.
The S-1 lists the parts: $1.7 billion in Series G preferred stock, $1.65 billion in regional joint ventures, $1.3 billion in a 2017 tender offer and $1.0 billion through a 2018 convertible note. It also lists $2.5 billion through a 2018 warrant, $1.0 billion in a 2019 tender offer and $1.5 billion through a 2019 warrant.
The S-1 dates the joint-venture stakes in ChinaCo, JapanCo and PacificCo, $1.4 billion of them, to 2017, by our arithmetic. Earlier friction between Musk and SoftBank over power equipment is in Musk Accuses SoftBank of Turbine Default as Its Bonds Slide.
Musk’s $12 billion (his account) beside 25% of Tesla at the 10 November close, SoftBank’s cumulative OpenAI investment, the $10.65 billion SoftBank invested or committed in WeWork per the August 2019 S-1, and SoftBank’s July-to-September loss. The Teslavalue and the dollar loss are our arithmetic.
Our Numbers
Musk’s $12 billion for a quarter implies $48 billion for all of Tesla, by our arithmetic. Tesla’s 10-Q for the third quarter of 2026 lists 3,952,757,946 shares outstanding at 15 October. At the $379.78 close on 10 November, per Nasdaq data, that is a market value of about $1.50 trillion, by our arithmetic.
A quarter of that is about $375.3 billion, 31 times Musk’s $12 billion and 35 times the $10.65 billion in the WeWork S-1, by our arithmetic. SoftBank’s July-to-September net loss of ¥1,115.3 billion is about $7.0 billion at ¥160.12 per dollar, by our arithmetic in our results piece.
The Structural Read
As we read the record, the documents split in two: Tesla’s own 2018 posts and the SEC complaint tell the take-private story through the Saudi fund, while SoftBank enters only through Bloomberg’s account of 2017 talks that it says stalled over ownership and control.
As we read the timing, the post lands as SoftBank’s capital choices are under scrutiny: our results piece converts its July-to-September loss to about $7.0 billion, and its cumulative OpenAI investment reached $64.6 billion, six times the $10.65 billion in WeWork’s S-1, by our arithmetic.
Elon Musk on X, 11 November 2026, replying to the KatieMiller account
“I remember that time when Masa, instead of putting $12B into Tesla for a 1/4 of the company to help me take Tesla private, instead invested the money in WeWork”
Three Implications
FOR SOFTBANK Its CFO said on 10 November there is no turbine default, per an Investing.com transcript; the company had not addressed the WeWork post in anything we read.
FOR TESLA HOLDERS The 10-Q share count and the 10 November close put Tesla’s market value at about $1.50 trillion, by our arithmetic.
FOR THE RECORD Bloomberg reported in 2018 that Musk proposed supervoting stock that would have given him disproportionate control, citing one person.
The framework argues: “The $1T capex cycle is being underwritten by a $1T concentrated demand commitment from two counterparties whose combined free cash flow is deeply negative.”
As we read it, SoftBank is one of the underwriters of that cycle through its OpenAI stake, and Musk’s post is about an earlier underwriting choice. The framework predates the post and does not discuss it.
What Is Not Established
We found no document that sets out a $12 billion offer for a quarter of Tesla. Musk’s post is the only source for that figure and for the claim that SoftBank chose WeWork instead. Bloomberg’s 2018 account rests on unnamed people and, in the part we read, gives no amount.
The record we read does not say whether SoftBank was among the “number of other investors” Musk mentioned in August 2018. Neither SoftBank nor Tesla was contacted for this piece.
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Musk says Son passed on a quarter of Tesla for $12 billion and put the money into WeWork. Musk’s 13 August 2018 Tesla post names the Saudi fund, and the SEC complaint describes a sovereign investment fund. A 2018 Bloomberg report says Son and Musk talked in April 2017. WeWork’s S-1 puts SoftBank’s investments and commitments at $10.65 billion; a quarter of Tesla is worth about $375.3 billion now, by our arithmetic.
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A note on sourcing. We read Elon Musk’s X post of 11 November 2026 and the post it replied to via the fxtwitter API; Tesla’s blog posts of 13 and 24 August 2018 via the Internet Archive; the SEC complaint of 27 September 2018 in full; the opening of Bloomberg’s 8 August 2018 report (the rest is paywalled); and the SoftBank section of WeWork’s August 2019 S-1.
Tesla’s share count is from its 10-Q via SEC data, and the close from Nasdaq. Market values and multiples are our arithmetic. Neither SoftBank nor Tesla was contacted.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
