Elon Musk Went 'Five Steps Further' Than Regular Credit-Grabber CEOs, Director Alex Gibney Claims

Director Alex Gibney has questioned Elon Musk's image as an inventor in a US podcast interview released on Friday, 9 October.

His remarks, focused on Tesla's contested founding history, precede the nationwide American release of his documentary, Musk, on 16 October.

The film runs for nearly four hours and examines Musk's business career and political influence. Yet Gibney's argument about personal reputation dates back to the electric carmaker's early years, well before Musk became its most recognisable figure.

Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning established Tesla in 2003. Musk joined in 2004 as an investor and chairman of the board. He later became chief executive and is among five people formally recognised as Tesla co-founders.

Why Alex Gibney Questions Elon Musk's 'Inventor' Image

Speaking to Lizzie O'Leary on Slate's What Next: TBD podcast, Gibney discussed what the host called the 'myth of self' running through the documentary.

'Virtually every CEO is a credit-grabber,' Gibney said. He argued that Musk 'went one step or two or three or five steps further than that' following a dispute with Tesla's original chief executive, Eberhard.

Gibney also alleged that Musk fired Eberhard. The latter left Tesla in 2007, although the circumstances and responsibility for his departure have been contested. Gibney's account is an interpretation of those events, not an established finding about Musk's conduct.

Tesla's securities filings tell another important part of the story. They record Musk becoming board chairman in April 2004 and chief executive in October 2008.

The company also credited him with recruiting engineers, raising capital, helping develop and design the Roadster and attracting public attention. Those contributions complicate any suggestion that Musk merely invested money and watched others build the business.

Gibney's criticism centres on how those contributions became associated with the image of an individual technological inventor.

What Elon Musk's 2009 Tesla Founder Dispute Established

The question of who could call themselves a Tesla founder became the subject of legal proceedings in 2009. Eberhard sued Musk, alleging damage to his reputation. Musk disputed the claims.

In July, a California judge rejected Eberhard's attempt to be recognised as one of only two founders. Tesla welcomed the ruling, saying it supported the company's view that several early figures had helped create the business.

The dispute ended in a confidential settlement in September. Contemporaneous accounts identified five recognised co-founders, namely Musk, Eberhard, Tarpenning, JB Straubel and Ian Wright.

That outcome acknowledged Musk's founder status without changing the fact that Eberhard and Tarpenning had established the company the previous year before Musk joined.

Gibney nevertheless offered a harsher reading of the settlement. 'The lawsuit was only settled when Eberhard would agree to say that Elon was what he wasn't, which was the founder of Tesla,' he said.

The publicly disclosed details of the confidential agreement do not support his characterisation of the negotiations. The judge's earlier decision also cuts against any suggestion that the courts recognised Eberhard as one of just two founders.

For Gibney, the title matters beyond a line in a company's history. He called mythmaking in Silicon Valley 'a real economic equation' and compared Musk's public image to that of a 'Leonardo da Vinci character.'

Those are the director's assessments. The available records do not establish a specific financial gain resulting from Musk's founder designation.

Musk has publicly criticised Gibney's documentary, calling it a 'hit piece.' That criticism concerned the film, not the podcast remarks. The filmmakers sought his participation, but Musk did not sit for an interview.

In a Reddit discussion promoting the documentary, a user asked Gibney whether early publicity helped establish Musk's reputation as a technology innovator. The question was not evidence that such a strategy existed.

Gibney previously directed Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. 'He became the inventor,' Gibney said, 'as opposed to the investor.'