Elon Musk said in a series of tweets on Friday local time that Bill Gates has shorted Tesla and now needs $1.5 billion to $2billion to settle. Musk said in his tweet that while gates claimed to help solve the problem of global warming, he also short Tesla "billions of dollars". I think I have some trust problems with him.
Musk said that the position was US $500million and was still growing after Tesla's "sharp rise".
Asked whether to short Tesla on CNBC last year, Gates said: "I won't talk about my investment."
At the end of April this year, a suspected chat between musk and gates was exposed on twitter. According to the US business insider website reported on April 23, Tesla CEO musk accused Microsoft founder Bill Gates of "shorting" Tesla shares, and canceled an agreed meeting with gates.
According to the report, the chat screenshot shows that Gates asked musk for a private chat about "philanthropy" about climate change. At the end of the chat, musk asked gates if he had spent $500million "shorting" Tesla, and gates admitted. When gates wanted to have further discussion on "philanthropy", musk declined and said: "you are so targeted at Tesla, I really can't take your cooperation intention seriously."
It is reported that this is not the first time that the above two people have openly disagreed. When gates revealed in 2020 that he had bought himself an all electric Porsche taycan, a twitter user asked, "I wonder why Bill Gates decided to buy taycan instead of Tesla." Musk responded on a twitter post: "to be honest, my conversation with Gates has never been meaningful."