Comment This is common in Silicon Valley (Score 5, Interesting) 55
It's common for a successful company to buy out investors in an unsuccessful company as a way to move value out of the sham higher value company directly into the lower value company, because, of course, they'd rhe same investors. It's a way to get a pay off early without selling off your tesla stock.
Same thing happened with the YouTube buyout by Google. The VC firm that funded both companies wanted a payoff even though at the time the deal made no sense.