Bill Gates, Elon Musk.Photo: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg via Getty; JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty
Elon Musksaid he didn’t want to team up withBill Gatesbecause the two billionaires didn’t agree about the future of Tesla.
On Friday, alleged screenshots of atext message conversationbetween the Tesla CEO and the Microsoft co-founder were posted on Twitter, which Musk isbuying for $44 billion.
The messages appeared to show Musk turning down a philanthropic opportunity from Gates after asking if the software developer had shorted his electric car company — meaning that Gates would make a profit if the value of the stock fell.
"Do you still have a half billion dollar short position against Tesla?" Musk asked, per the screenshots, to which Gates allegedly replied, “Sorry to say I haven’t closed it out. I would like to discuss philanthropy possibilities.”
“Sorry, I cannot take your philanthropy on climate change seriously when you have a massive short position against Tesla,” Musk replied in the exchange.
A spokesperson for Gates did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Asked if the messages were “real,” Elon replied on Twitter, “yeah.”
“I heard from multiple people at TED that Gates still had half billion short against Tesla, which is why I asked him, so it’s not exactly top secret,” Muskwrote.
In his tweet, Musk claimed that he “didn’t leak” the screenshots toThe New York Times,adding that “they must have got it through friends of friends.” (TheNYThas not reported on the texts, and it’s unclear why Musk mentioned the newspaper.)
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Speaking with CNBC last year, Gates was directly asked if he shorted Tesla stock, a claim Musk has publicly made before.
“I don’t talk about my investments,” he said, adding that Musk “should be very proud of what he’s done.”
“I think what Elon’s done with Tesla is fantastic,” he said at another point in the conversation. “It’s probably the biggest single contribution to showing us that electric cars are part of how we solve climate change.”
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In a 2021 conversation with theNYT,Gates spoke about how companies like Tesla are focused on “the easy stuff” when it comes to fighting carbon emissions.
“But we’re basically not doing enough on the hard stuff: steel, cement, meat. And sadly, the things people think about — the electricity, passenger cars — are a third of the problem,” Gates said. “So we have to work on the two-thirds.”
source: people.com
