*By Bridgette Webb and Amanda Weston*
Tesla's board is going ahead with its review of Elon Musk’s gambit to take the company private, though there's still lots of skepticism around the deal and its various backers.
"We still don't know who the backer is and what the deal structure will end up looking like," said Christian Prenzler, vice president of business development at Teslarati. "I definitely wouldn't bet against the deal's existence or the gravity it brings to what we know as Tesla on the NASDAQ."
Musk's plan, announced on Twitter on Tuesday, would take the electric carmaker private at a price of $420 a share. He's argued that Tesla would be less disruptive as a private company. It would also allow the company to escape the glaring spotlight of fluctuating stock prices, mounting questions on model 3 production goals and quarterly reports.
Investors may see an upside in such a move, according to Prenzler, and a number of potential backers have been rumored, including the Saudi Wealth Fund, Tencent and Softbank.
"It’s being pitched like an investment in a company like Uber," Prenzler said. "It’s a long-term plan. They’re betting on Musk making a million cars in a year. "
Still, Prenzler sees value in keeping Tesla public.
"It’s very healthy for a company to be public, to be under the public eye, to have a lot of accountability. And to be forced into really revealing a lot of information and going into some of these rough times," Prenzler said.
Jason Moser, an analyst at The Motley Fool, said in a separate interview with Cheddar that Musk's ambitions require "extremely long-term thinking," and may be more suitable for a private company.
"In order to be as successful as possible, I think he would rather be able to run this business without being held to sort of arbitrary guidelines perhaps that Wall Street throws out there on a quarterly basis," Moser said.
SpaceX, another one of Musk's companies, has been able to function out of the spotlight, allowing Musk to execute long-term planning.
"With Tesla, I love what he's doing. I think the world needs more of what they're doing, and I think that getting out of the public scrutiny and public markets would probably give him the best opportunity to go ahead and execute that," Moser said.
Like Prenzler, Moser thinks that Musk will get his way, eventually.
"When he wants something, he can get it because he's relentless," said Moser. "He keeps at it until he figures out a way, so if he really wants to take this business private, and it sounds like he does, I don't think he's going to have a problem getting there."
For more on this story, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/the-next-era-for-tesla).
Velo3d, a company that provides metal 3D printed parts for companies such as SpaceX, reported a boost in Q4 revenue quarter over quarter. Founder and CEO Benny Buller, joined Cheddar News to discuss the earnings and the foundation of the company's current success. "The whole space sector is about 25 percent of our business. We have a lot of business in aviation, in power generation, in energy, and in semiconductors. I would say that the big jump in our revenue is related to the release of our Sapphire XC, which is a scale-up product reducing costs by about three times compared to the first Sapphire machines," he said. "This allows customers to dramatically reduce costs as well as make much bigger parts."
Under the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), corn-based ethanol has been mixed into gasoline sold at pumps in the U.S. since 2005, when a policy was enacted aimed at reducing emissions. Corn-based ethanol had been thought to be a relatively greener energy source compared to other biofuels, but now, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports it may be actually worse for the climate than straight gasoline. Tyler Lark, an assistant scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Sustainability, joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell and discussed the pushback against the study. "Essentially when you need to produce more corn to meet the demand for use as ethanol as fuel, farmers respond and they switch more crops like soybeans and wheat into corn," Lark said. "They also bring more land into production, so things that used to be pasture grassland, and both those activities are associated with increased greenhouse gas emissions."
Video conferencing service Zoom rolled out a flurry of announcements that included a new Zoom Phone, Zoom Events, and Zoom Contact Center in an effort to transition the company from a pandemic darling to a post-pandemic business — while keeping the product accessible. Kelly Steckelberg, CFO of Zoom, joined Cheddar News to talk about the transition while still remaining affordable. "We currently have no plans to raise our prices," she said. "We focus on bringing as much value as possible to our customers. We often add new features and functionality without any incremental prices across the board."
Alexandre Mongeon, the CEO and co-founder of Vision Marine Technologies, joins Cheddar Innovates to discuss the latest innovations in the e-boating industry, and how fully electric motors and boats will play a role in the fight against the climate crisis.
Even as pandemic restrictions slowly began winding down through 2021, cable and internet provider Comcast's 2021 Network Report showed that average internet consumption increased. Activities like content streaming and online gaming grew between 10 and 20 percent, according to the study. Elad Nafshi, chief network officer for Comcast, joined Cheddar News to share what he thinks will happen with our new online habits in a post-pandemic world. "Beyond, the traditional game downloads, streaming gaming, which falling into the purposes is just like streaming 4K video for us, is starting to pick up and, and certainly we'll watch that consumer behavior continue," he said. Nafshi also discussed the company's investments in 10G technology, its future generation of network speed.
AMC has announced that it will be accepting Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, two meme cryptocurrencies, as online payment options, The theater chain will begin taking the memecoins in "a couple of weeks."
