THE billionaire feud between Elon Musk and Bill Gates has continued to intensify over the last several weeks, with their latest spat being broadcasted on Twitter.
The tech billionaires have not seen eye-to-eye since an exchange of texts between the two was leaked online, where Musk accused Gates of short-selling Tesla stock, betting that it would fall.
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In the leaked texts, verified by the SpaceX founder himself, Gates asked Musk to work on philanthropic efforts together to help combat climate change.
However, Musk accused Gates of shorting Tesla stocks, saying: “Do you still have a half billion dollar short position against Tesla?”
In finance, holding a short position means that you place a bet that the price of a certain asset, such as stocks in a company, will decline in value.
Gates’ replied: “Sorry to say I haven’t closed it out. I would like to discuss philanthropy possibilities.”
His refusal to give Musk a clear answer left the Tesla founder unwilling to work with Gates on his proposal.
“Sorry, but I cannot take your philanthropy on climate change seriously when you have a massive short position against Tesla, the company doing the most to solve climate change,” Musk allegedly responded to Gates’ request.
Days later, Musk tweeted a picture of Gates and compared him to the pregnant man emoji.
Musk suggested the unflattering comparison image should be used to make a man lose an erection quickly.
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He captioned it: “In case u need to lose a b***r fast.” Gates has yet to publicly comment on the tweet.
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Gates was recently asked about the text exchange in an interview with YouTuber Hugo Travers on the HugoDecrypte channel.
“Well Tesla’s not short of capital and Tesla’s done a fantastic job; their cars are great,” Gates said but added: “I give a lot more money to climate change than Elon or anyone else.
“Cars are about 16 percent of emissions, so we also need to solve that other 84 percent, he said.
“He [Musk] has done a great job, but somebody shorting the stock doesn’t slow him down or hurt him in any way.”
Musk replied to a clip of the interview posted to Twitter with, “sigh.”
Gates has previously spoken positively about Tesla and its work for greener cars, telling the New York Times the company is “one of the greatest contributions to climate change anyone’s ever made.”
But, he added that he doesn’t think “rockets are the solution,” referring to Musk’s SpaceX, adding that Musk’s efforts were “easy stuff, like passenger cars.”
Supposed Tesla snubs have caused Musk to tweet angrily about Gates in the past.
When a Tesla fan tweeted about Gates buying an electric Porsche back in 2020, Musk replied: “My conversations with Gates have been underwhelming tbh [to be honest].”
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