Liam Denning, Columnist

Two Odes to Elon Musk’s Genius Need a Grain of Salt

Walter Isaacson’s book and a bullish Morgan Stanley report on Tesla have something in common: They give the billionaire extraordinary benefit of the doubt.

September 13, 2023 at 10:00 AM UTC

By Liam Denning

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

Elon Musk, billionaire and chief executive officer of Tesla.
Photographer: Nathan Laine/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

This week saw the release of another ode to the genius of Elon Musk, gushingly accepting his pronouncements at face value. Also, Walter Isaacson published a book about him.

Isaacson’s 600-odd page Elon Musk, which debuted Tuesday, was beaten to the punch by Adam Jonas, a sell-side analyst at Morgan Stanley. He released a 60-odd page report the previous day boosting his target price for Tesla Inc., Musk’s electric vehicle manufacturer, on the thesis that Tesla is actually an artificial intelligence powerhouse in the making.