Elon Musk Rekindles Billionaire Conflict With Bill Gates, Says He Better Get Out Of His ‘Crazy Short Selling’ Against Tesla Soon Or Add To His $1.5 Billion Losses
Elon Musk apparently still hasn’t gotten over Bill Gates betting against Tesla, even though his multimillion-dollar short sale turned into a $1.5 billion loss.
The Tesla CEO, in a victory lap after shareholders approved his massive $1 trillion compensation plan, demonstrated that his feud with Gates is alive and well, years after it began.
“If Gates hasn’t completely liquidated the crazy short position he’s had against Tesla for about 8 years, he better do it soon,” Musk said in a post Sunday.
The post, in response to an anonymous user commenting on the Gates Foundation’s divestiture of Microsoft stock, breathes new life into the conflict between Musk and Gates, which dates back to 2022.
Gates allegedly shorted or bet against Tesla stock to the tune of $500 million, resulting in a personal message from Musk and “super mean” behavior, Gates said in a later interview with Musk biographer Walter Isaacson. The then-Tesla CEO bluntly asked Gates if he had taken the short position, which the Microsoft co-founder confirmed, while adding in the message that he wanted to talk about opportunities for philanthropy.
Musk, however, balked at the idea.
“Sorry, I can’t take your climate change philanthropy seriously when you have a massive short position against Tesla, the company doing the most to solve climate change,” he said in a message at the time.
He followed up with an article about X making fun of Gates’ weight. Gates, for his part, said the short film “has nothing to do with climate change. I have ways to branch out,” he told the BBC.
Despite Musk’s animosity, which Gates later explained — “he’s super mean to so many people, so you can’t take it too personally” — Musk’s Tesla turned the tables on Gates.
It’s unclear exactly when Gates opened the short position, but since April 2022, when the exchange between Gates and Musk was made public, the EV company’s shares have soared at least 20%, but possibly more depending on the price at which Gates shorted the shares.
Gates’ bet caused it to plunge $1.5 billion when the stock was trading at $400 per share, according to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk. As of Monday, the stock was trading at around $408 per share.
The reignited feud between Gates and Musk comes as Musk, who has a net worth of $431 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Indexhas likely cemented his place as the world’s richest man for years to come thanks to a massive compensation plan approved by Tesla shareholders earlier this month.
The largest CEO compensation plan ever proposed would give Tesla’s CEO up to $1 trillion in compensation in exchange for meeting certain performance criteria, including increasing the stock’s market value to $8.5 trillion, more than any other company in modern history.
