Sometimes Elon Musk‘s posts on social media platforms send cryptocurrencies soaring or Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock spinning. But one of his most consequential posts on X (formerly known as tweets) didn’t move any market — it quietly changed Tesla’s future.
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The Tweet That Started It All
Back in November 2015, Musk posted a simple call to arms on X (then called Twitter):
“Ramping up the Autopilot software team at Tesla to achieve generalized full autonomy.”
Among the replies, Ashok Elluswamy sent a short note expressing his desire to join the mission. That message caught Musk’s attention — and earned him a place as the first engineer on Tesla’s Autopilot team.
From A Tweet To Tesla’s AI Brain
Nearly a decade later, Elluswamy now leads Tesla’s AI and Autopilot division, the engine propelling Musk’s vision of full self-driving. Under his leadership, Tesla’s software has evolved from basic lane-keeping to real-time decision-making — powered by one of the world’s largest vision-based neural networks.
What began as a simple tweet reply has become central to Tesla’s push into the most valuable frontier of the EV industry — autonomy.
Tesla’s Strength: Building, Not Buying
Musk, on Sunday, reminded followers that Tesla’s growth has been “~90% organic.”
The company didn’t acquire its core strengths — it created them.
Elluswamy’s story embodies that mindset. Tesla’s AI capability wasn’t bought off the shelf or through an acquisition. It was built, line by line, from a tweet that turned into a movement.
Why It Matters To Tesla Investors
For investors, this story is more than corporate folklore — it’s a signal of Tesla’s evolving moat. As competitors like Alphabet Inc‘s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) Waymo, Mercedes, and XPeng Inc (NYSE:XPEV) lean on partnerships and acquisitions to advance autonomy, Tesla’s in-house AI stack gives it tighter integration and faster iteration cycles.
If full self-driving becomes Tesla’s next profit engine, Musk’s 2015 tweet might turn out to be his most lucrative investment yet — one that built the brain powering Tesla’s next valuation reset.
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