Elon Musk’s Tesla yanks summer internship offers, students say

Tesla has reportedly reneged on summer internship offers it made to college students.

Multiple students described their situations in posts on their LinkedIn profiles this week. Bloomberg was first to report the news Wednesday.

One of the students identified by the outlet said Tesla informed her on Monday via a phone call that she no longer had a summer internship, a development she linked to the workforce and cost-reduction efforts Tesla recently started.

Tesla said in mid-April it would shed 10% of its 140,400-person headcount. Roughly 6,000 of those layoffs are hitting workers in Texas and California.

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More recently, the EV maker indicated more workers, including much of the Supercharger team, would be laid off in addition to the initial eliminations, The Information reported.

FOX Business reached out to Tesla for comment regarding internship offers and how many it reportedly withdrew, but did not receive a response by the time of publication. 

Tesla said in mid-April it would shed 10% of its 140,400-person headcount. (PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)

Another college student said Wednesday that his offer also got pulled with very little notice, according to Bloomberg. In a LinkedIn post, he reported that prior to Tesla backtracking on its offer, he had already locked down housing for the internship with the EV maker that he had expected to begin in three weeks.

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Tesla’s reported internship offer withdrawals came as the academic year is winding down at many universities and many students are gearing up to soon join companies as summer interns.

A Tesla corporate logo hangs on the front of a store in Santa Monica, California, on April 10, 2023.  (Gary Hershorn/Getty Images / Getty Images)

The Musk-run EV maker typically brings onboard students in the spring, summer and fall for internships. More than 6,000 students become Tesla interns each year, per the company’s most recent annual report.

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Tesla, which has experienced some turbulence in recent weeks, said its planned headcount reductions “will prepare Tesla for our next phase of growth, as we are developing some of the most revolutionary technologies in auto, energy and artificial intelligence” when it disclosed them in a mid-April filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The company has multiple projects in the pipeline, including new and lower-cost vehicles and a robotaxi. 

FOX Business’ Breck Dumas contributed to this report.