Still fuming over his shorting of Tesla stock last year, Elon Musk rebuffed an attempt by Microsoft founder Bill Gates to offer him philanthropy advice and called him an ‘a**hole to the core’ in a text to his biographer.
The feud between Elon Musk and Bill Gates
The feud began when Gates visited a Tesla plant in Austin, Texas, in March 2022.
Gates had attempted to profit by shorting Tesla stock – predicting the company would go down in value.
It was a move that cost him $1.5billion in the end.
Musk, furious that he’d bet against the company when he himself claims to be an eco-warrior, confronted him about it and Gates apologized, but the damage was done.
‘He was super mean to me,’ he recalled. Several months later, Gates emailed Musk a list of philanthropic causes to consider.
Musk responded asking if he still retained the short position against Tesla, which Gates did, then rejected the offer to team up.
‘Sorry. I cannot take your philanthropy on climate seriously when you have a massive short position against Tesla, the company doing the most to solve climate change,’ he said.
He sent a text to biographer Walter Isaacson later, calling Gates ‘categorically insane’ and ‘an a**hole to the core’.
‘I did actually want to like him (sigh),’ he wrote.
When Gates first requested the meeting, Musk responded by saying that he didn’t have a scheduler or a personal assistant, telling Gates to have his secretary call him directly.
Musk gave Gates a tour
Gates bypassed his secretary and set the meeting up for March 9, 2022.
Musk gave Gates a tour of his factory in Austin, which impressed Gates but still, the two had much to debate while he visited.
Ultimately, when Isaacson pressed Gates on why he shorted the stock, he simply thought he could make money by doing so, which Isaacson called ‘alien’ to Musk.
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‘How can someone say they are passionate about fighting climate change and then do something that reduced the overall investment in the company doing the most?’ Gates asked Isaacson days after Gates’ visit.
‘It’s pure hypocrisy. Why make money on the failure of a sustainable energy car company?’
Grimes, Musk’s ex-girlfriend and the mother of three of his children, called the incident ‘a little bit of a d**k-measuring contest.’
Gates was also critical of Musk’s belief that solar energy could solve climate change and that batteries could ever power semi-trucks. ‘I showed him the numbers,’ Gates said.
‘It’s an area where I clearly knew something that he didn’t.’
