Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, in a tweet, acknowledged asking Bill Gates if he was shorting the electric carmaker’s stock.
Shorting a stock means betting that the price will drop.
Nevertheless, the world’s most valuable carmaker stock is still trading above $1000 with a market valuation of $1.039 trillion.
“The reason I asked him is that I heard Gates still owed Tesla half a billion dollars, so it’s not exactly top secret,” Musk tweeted.
The tweet was intended to answer a Twitter user’s question about whether a screenshot of what appears to be a text conversation between the two billionaires was real.
The Tesla CEO responded with: “Yeah, but I did not leak it to the NYT.” They must have gotten it from friends.
The unverifiable chat showed Musk asking Gates: “Are you still short Tesla by half a billion dollars?”
In reply, Gates said, “Sorry, I haven’t closed it out yet. I am interested in discussing philanthropic possibilities.”
Taking issue with Musk’s philanthropy on climate change, Musk replied: “I can’t take your philanthropy seriously when you are short Tesla, the company taking the most action on climate change.”
- In an interview with NYT opinion writer Kara Swisher last year, Gates said: “It’s important to remember what Elon did with Tesla contributed significantly to climate change. It’s not wise to underestimate Elon.”
- Nevertheless, Gates said what Tesla was doing was “easy stuff” like passenger cars. He emphasized the need to tackle other industries in order to make a greater impact on climate change.
- The hard stuff, such as steel, cement, and meat, is not handled well enough, he said then.
- A third of the problem is the things people think about like electricity and passenger vehicles. The remaining two-thirds must be addressed.
- “If you only consider those short-term metrics, rather than the long-term green premium, then you miss out on what is the hardest,” Bill Gates added.
Elon is a good man and I truly like his simple ways of life..
I guess Gates is just being childish about this.
How could you diminish the person of Elon Musk and his disruptive achievements, by inferring that Elon Musk has achieved only “simple stuff”?
Gates point is that there is a lot more that needs to be done to tackle climate change and Musk needs to do a lot more- as the richest man in the world. I really admire Gates and his contribution to philanthropy and tackling climate change.
I believe both men are good in there opinion but if there’s money owed to Tesla Gates should pay up ASAP so musk will continue his good works no matter how small it may seem to him. Lol 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Gates might be wrong for shorting Tesla, but he’s right about meat and cement being much more troublesome in the fight against climate change.
I think Elon already envision a sustainable Environment through the use of tech, stored energy in battery and electricity generated from the sun. If this is the primary focus then the adverse impact of fossil fuel will be put to bay and there by ensuring a sustainable Environment which is the subject of the the purpose of Elon climatic change. This is a good call from Elon, this is not a mundane thing as stressed by Bill. Well if it’s to castigate Elon thats bad. This is a life changing project so Elon musk not experiment but text hypothesis before reaching a final conclusion selling to the world at large