Ira Ehrenpreis, Tesla Board
Ira Matthew Ehrenpreis is the ultimate Tesla insider. A venture capitalist since the mid-90s, he got in on the ground floor at Tesla as a board member in 2007 soon after his firm Double Bottom Line Partners (DBL) invested in Tesla at a time when many were still doubting the viability of electric vehicles. DBL, which also invests in Musk’s SpaceX, does “impact investing:” a greenwashing marketing term used when a firm pretends it’s just as concerned with creating measurable social/environmental benefits as financial returns.
Not only the Tesla board’s longest-serving member, Ehrenpreis also chairs Tesla's Nominating and Corporate Governance and Compensation Committees. For nearly two decades, he's been a fixture and reportedly one of Musk's closest confidants and allies. Critics argue Ehrenpreis embodies everything wrong with Tesla's governance: a cozy insider who's enriched himself while failing to rein in his buddy. Under his watch, Tesla approved Musk's 2025 $55 billion pay package—the one a Delaware judge briefly nuked, calling the process "deeply flawed" and the directors insufficiently independent, before the state’s Supreme Court later restored it. In 2025, Ehrenpreis then championed the unprecedented $1 trillion pay package shareholders approved for Musk.
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