Tesla simply kicked off its 2023 annual shareholders assembly at its Austin, Texas manufacturing unit, on Tuesday with shareholders voting so as to add former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, who’s now the CEO of Redwood Supplies, to the automaker’s board of administrators.

Redwood Supplies recycles digital waste and batteries, and final 12 months struck a multi-billion greenback deal with Tesla provider Panasonic.

After the shareholder vote, CEO Elon Musk kicked off his portion of the assembly with a dedication to conduct a third-party audit of Tesla’s cobalt provide chain, specifically to make sure there isn’t any baby labor inside any of Tesla’s cobalt suppliers.

Cobalt is a essential ingredient for manufacturing of batteries that go into Tesla’s electrical automobiles and backup battery packs used at houses and for utility-scale vitality initiatives. “Even for the small quantity of cobalt that we do us, we’ll be certain six weeks til Sunday that no baby labor is being exploited,” Musk stated to the cheers of buyers in attendance in particular person.

Because the electrical car maker’s final annual assembly in August 2022, Tesla’s largest retail shareholder, Leo Koguan, has criticized Musk for promoting billions of {dollars} price of his Tesla holdings to finance a $44 billion buyout of Twitter, the social media firm.

Koguan, who’s a billionaire and founding father of the IT providers agency SHI Worldwide, referred to as for the corporate’s board to “carry out shock remedy to resuscitate inventory worth,” specifically by means of a share buyback late final 12 months.

Musk is now serving as CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter concurrently, however just lately introduced that he has employed a brand new CEO for Twitter, Linda Yaccarino, the previous head of promoting at NBC Common. Musk plans to remain on at Twitter within the function of CTO.

Some institutional Tesla buyers have admonished Musk for being too distracted together with his new function as Twitter CEO to carry out optimally on the helm of Tesla. They’ve additionally criticized the Tesla board, led by chairwoman Robyn Denholm, for failing to rein him in and defend shareholders’ pursuits.

Shares in Tesla closed at $228.52 on October 28, 2022, after Musk formally took over Twitter. They closed at $166.52 on Might 16, 2023, because the assembly kicked off.

On the 2022 annual shareholders assembly for Tesla, Musk predicted an 18-month recession, teased the potential of share buybacks, and informed buyers that electrical car enterprise was aiming to provide 20 million automobiles yearly by 2030, which he thought would require a dozen factories complete with every one producing 1.5 million to 2 million items per 12 months.

At the moment, Musk additionally informed buyers the long-delayed Cybertruck wouldn’t have the identical specs and pricing that have been initially promised when the corporate unveiled the angular pickup in 2019.

It is a growing story, please test again for updates.

Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the guardian firm of CNBC.