💬 Quoted… “I am uncomfortable growing Tesla to be a leader in AI & robotics without having ~25% voting control. Enough to be influential, but not so much that I can’t be overturned.”

• Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to X yesterday to state that unless he has 25% control of Tesla – nearly double his ~13% stake – he would prefer to build products outside of the automaker. And where do AI and robotics come into play? 95% of Tesla’s revenue currently comes from its automotive activities, but Musk has touted future products like Optimus, a humanoid robot, that “ultimately will be worth more than the car business and worth more than full self-driving.” Boosting the billionaire's ownership to one-quarter of voting control would effectively force Tesla to give him a major payout, restructure its shares, or pull another financial lever, per CBS.

🍿 Stat of the Day: TV and film production in Hollywood following 2023’s industry-wide strikes has been like a night owl trying to get out of bed in the morning – slow to get going again. Overall location filming was down 32.4% in 2023 compared to 2022, figures that include both commercials and reality TV, neither of which were directly impacted by the strikes. And in Q4 2023, ”shoot days” for both scripted TV production and feature films were down significantly compared to 2022 (~85% and 57%, respectively).

🤔 Did You Know?... It may not feel like it with all the recent news stories documenting airplane fuselages blowing out in midair as well as runway collision-close calls, but flying in America has never been safer. The biggest US commercial airlines have now gone nearly 15 years without a fatal crash – quite a statistical feat considering there have been more than 100 million flights over that span.

📰 Worth a Read: The great dollar store backlash → (The Hustle)