Elon Musk accuses Bill Gates of shorting Tesla
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?”
Read: UK allows gas payment to Russian Gazprombank until the end of May
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.
