Billionaire Elon Musk was “super mean” to fellow billionaire Bill Gates after the Microsoft co-founder purchased a short position on Tesla stock, Gates says.
Gates made the comment to author Walter Isaacson, who has been writing a biography of Musk for the past three years. An excerpt from the upcoming book offers more details into Musk’s anger with Gates after learning that he had bet on Tesla’s stock to drop.
“Once he heard I’d shorted the stock, he was super mean to me, but he’s super mean to so many people, so you can’t take it too personally,” Gates told the author.
Musk confirmed in April 2022 that he had refused a philanthropy request from Gates over the stock shorting incident, detailing parts of their text exchange.
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In the texts, the two billionaires appeared set to meet somewhere before Musk asked Gates if he still had a “half billion dollar short position against Tesla.”
“Sorry to say I haven’t closed it yet,” adding in another text. “I would like to discuss philanthropy possibilities.”
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Musk replied that he could not take Gates’ philanthropy on climate change “seriously when you have a massive short position against Tesla, the company doing the most to solve climate change.”
Gates told Isaacson that he had apologized to Musk over the incident, but that the relationship had not improved.
Musk posted a meme appearing to mock Gates for his weight in the days following the text exchange revelation, but he soon announced that he was “moving on” from the topic.
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