Adding to my earlier rebuttal: they do when a few billion is quite likely to turn into a lot of billions. That’d simply be called investing.
Kind of like when Daimler gave Tesla $50M way back in 2008 when Tesla was going to go bankrupt without that cash infusion and then a few years later were rewarded with hundreds of millions. Daimler got a board seat at some point back then, which didn’t provide them any kind of particular control. If I recall correctly, that seat voted with the rest of the board every single time. Later Daimler was rewarded with hundreds of millions and the board seat went bye-bye.
The real kicker is that back then when Tesla was private and the recession hit there was a really good chance they’d fail and Daimler would lose their investment. All of us long term retail investors thank Daimler everyday for the risk they took. We also never understood why they got out right when things started to come together for Tesla. I’d have loved to be a fly on the wall when those decisions were made. While they got paid handsomely for the initial investments, if they’d stayed they’d have a crap ton more return. I believe there was some sort of changing of the guard at Daimler at that point that may have been the reaon for the cashout. One of the oldie members might recall better than I.
Now, those that were wanting to get a piece of a private Tesla were about as guaranteed of turning their investments into a grossly ridiculous pile of money as can happen in business. Demanding control over Tesla would have been greedy. Maybe you ask because you just have to ask as a matter of principle, but if you think there was any chance to take control you hadn’t been paying attention. That’s called Bachelor Degree of Elon Musk 101.