Elon Musk confirms he confronted Bill Gates about shorting Tesla stock

TLDR: In a sequence of leaked texts, Elon Musk evidently rejected obtaining philanthropic talks with fellow billionaire Monthly bill Gates due to the fact of the latter’s 50 %-billion-dollar short posture on Tesla. Musk confirmed the authenticity of these texts, but claimed he did not leak them himself.

On Friday, Elon Musk confirmed that he confronted Invoice Gates about shorting Tesla inventory. The leaked screenshots of texts between the two billionaires have been shared on Twitter, asking Musk if they ended up genuine.

In these screenshots, the Tesla CEO brazenly questioned Gates if he continue to held a $500 million brief place in opposition to Tesla. Gates admitted that he hadn’t shut it out, adding that he would like to discuss philanthropic options.

So apparently Bill Gates strike up @elonmusk to talk about “philanthropy on local weather transform” but Elon requested if he however had a fifty percent billion greenback brief situation on $TSLA.

Monthly bill stated he has not closed it out, so Elon instructed him to get dropped. No plan if this is accurate lol pic.twitter.com/iuHkDG3Lousy

— Whole Mars Catalog (@WholeMarsBlog) April 22, 2022

Musk immediately turned down this request, boasting that he are not able to get Gates’ perspective of climate alter significantly even though he is keeping a shorter place versus Tesla. According to him, the enterprise was doing the most to remedy local weather transform.

Shorter selling usually usually means that an trader or trader sells stocks they’ve borrowed, intending to obtain them back again afterwards at a decrease price tag. By executing this, they’re basically betting that the asset’s value will go down.

Musk claimed that the screenshots were being serious, although he denied leaking them himself. It is really not known when this trade took area, though it is really well worth noting that Musk very first talked about Bill Gates shorting Tesla stock in excess of a calendar year back on the Joe Rogan podcast.

Yeah, but I did not leak it to NYT. They will have to have acquired it as a result of friends of buddies.

I read from many individuals at TED that Gates however had half billion shorter from Tesla, which is why I asked him, so it really is not accurately major mystery.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 23, 2022

Elon Musk later tweeted a meme meant to mock Gates.

The two billionaires have brazenly feuded in the earlier, disagreeing about subjects these kinds of as Covid-19, colonizing Mars, and cryptocurrencies. Musk also tweeted in 2020 that his conversations with Gates have been underwhelming, so it truly is very clear the two usually are not on best phrases.