- Ross Gerber, CEO of investment firm Gerber Kawasaki, is a Tesla shareholder.
- Gerber said he plans to run for a seat on Tesla's board in a Twitter Spaces audio conference hosted on Friday.
Some investors are quiet, watching their shares in a company bob up and down with the stock market cycle. Others are more vocal, using their significant stake in a company to influence its management — they're often known as activist investors.
Now, one particularly aggravated, activist Tesla investor named Ross Gerber, is planning to run for a seat on Tesla's board, Bloomberg reported Friday.
Gerber, the chief executive officer of investment firm Gerber Kawasaki, announced his plans during a Twitter Spaces audio conference hosted by Bloomberg on Friday.
In the call, Gerber reportedly said, "Tesla needs to build its image around Tesla, and not just around Elon," and reportedly added, "I think it's time for Tesla to grow up."
As of December 31, Gerber's firm held 440,000 Tesla shares, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Tesla has about 3.16 billion shares outstanding, according to Yahoo Finance.
Gerber's plans come on the heels of a warning that Facebook's former security chief Alex Stamos issued on a podcast in December after Tesla's stock had dropped more than 62% so far in 2022.
On an episode of the podcast, Moderated Content, Stamos said, "If it continues to drop this hard, then you're going to end up with activist investors getting in, and those activist investors are going to push to get onto the board and then to put pressure on Musk — or even to maybe kick Musk off as CEO."
The company's stock ultimately dropped 65% over the course of 2022.
Tesla and Gerber Kawasaki did not immediately respond to Insider's request for a comment.