Bill Gates officially confronts Elon Musk, taking a bold step against him, and announces an initial offer of $333 million to buy X… Elon’s response leaves everyone speechless.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is known for monopolizing shareholders with his social media statements. In a recent post on X, Musk made a bold statement: if Tesla becomes the most valuable company in the world, even billionaire Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, could declare bankruptcy. The statement revived the long-running feud between Musk and Gates, which dates back to 2022, when Gates reportedly suffered a significant loss of $1.5 billion due to his short position in Tesla shares.
Musk posted on X: “If Tesla becomes the most valuable company in the world by a margin, this short position will ruin even Bill Gates.” Musk’s statement was in response to an X user, Teslaconomics, who shared his old tweet. In the 2023 tweet, the CEO said that opening a short position against Tesla, like Bill Gates, would only generate the most profit if Tesla went bankrupt. Musk also said that Gates was betting on Tesla’s downfall during a vulnerable period for the company. He also said that such a large short position could cause the stock price to plummet, affecting regular investors.
“May I ask, Gates *still* has this huge anti-Tesla pledge on the table. Someone should ask if he has it. What a lack of conscience and hypocrisy of Gates to have the nerve to ask me to donate to his environmental causes, mostly on the surface, while at the same time he stands to make $500 million off Tesla’s demise,” the tweet said.
When asked about his investment during a 2021 CNBC interview, Gates declined to comment on his positions but praised Tesla’s achievements, saying, “What Elon has done with Tesla is fantastic.”
Shorting is a stock market strategy in which an investor takes stock that they do not own, sells it at the current price, and then seeks to buy it back later at a lower price. The investor profits from the difference between the initial sale price and the purchase price, essentially betting that the stock will fall.
Elon Musk’s statement comes as Tesla’s current stock market capitalization stands at approximately $1.251 billion, considerably lower than Apple’s $3.729 billion. To surpass Apple and become the world’s most valuable company, Tesla would need to grow by nearly 200%.
