In February 2021, Bill Gates said to CBS that the world needed more entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and praised the “great ideas” of the founder of Tesla to tackle the climate crisis. Today, Gates’ opinion of his billionaire colleague has changed. And the feeling appears to be mutual.
This year, Musk topped the list of Forbes with a net worth of US$219,000 million, while Gates was number four, with US$129,000 million, below Jeff Bezos and Frenchman Bernard Arnault.
One would think that the richest men in the world do not need to fight in public, much less on Twitter, perhaps one of the most hostile platforms for debate. But Elon Musk has not been able to avoid it.
Though They haven’t had a good relationship for years.The latest escalation of social media rivalry reignited in mid-April, when Musk mocked the Microsoft founder, comparing him to an emoji of a pregnant man and accusing him of selling Tesla shares low while vowing to fight back. against climate change.
Leaked screenshots show Musk receiving messages from Gates to “discuss philanthropic possibilities” from Tesla and SpaceX. Singer Grimes’ ex responded that he was “not in the mood” to collaborate with Gates after he Software pioneer to confirm $500 million short position against Tesla.
Holding a short position, or “short selling,” happens when an investor bets that a company’s share price will sink.
Another comment that ignited Musk’s anger on Twitter happened last weekend, when Bill Gates told the French YouTuber Hugo Decrypte that he gives “a lot more to climate change than Elon or anyone else.”
Conflict in 2020: Gates prefers a Porsche to a Tesla
It could be said that the relationship between the two began to weaken in 2020, when Bill Gates expressed his distaste for the Tesla during an interview with Marques Brownlee, where he inferred that he preferred a Porsche electric car. Unable to let the insult go, Elon Musk responded by describing Gates as “disappointing.”
The two tech titans collide in part due to their differing views on how to interact with the world. Elon Musk writes his own tweets and has fired his PR team, while Gates is backed by a wide group of PR experts.
“Gates makes himself feel more presidential while Elon shoots straight,” he told The New York Post the journalist Nick Bilton, specialized in Silicon Valley and author of the book “Hatching Twitter”.
Elon displays a more childish sense of humor on Twitter, seems to take everything very personally, and doesn’t have much of a filter. On June 4, she tweeted a meme featuring a dinosaur, unicorn, dragon, and the words “The Epstein/Maxwell Client List” with the title “Things I will never see in my life”.
Gates has sadly admitted that he befriended Epstein before he ended his life inside a prison in 2019.
The Twitter purchase
In early May, Bill Gates warned that Elon Musk could make Twitter “worse” after the Tesla CEO pledged to buy the social media company for $44 billion.
At the Wall Street Journal CEO summit, Gates said it’s unclear how Musk will change Twitter if he takes ownership and also raised concerns about the spread of misinformation on social media.
“What are your ultimate goals? Does it coincide with diminishing the extreme falsehoods that spread so rapidly [y] the strange conspiracy theories? Do you share that goal or not?” Gates asked.
On Monday, Elon Musk issued his most direct threat yet to withdraw his purchase from Twitter, openly accusing the company of violating the merger agreement by not providing the data he requested about spam and fake accounts.
In a letter to Twitter’s chief legal, policy and trust officer Vijaya Gadde, Musk alleged that Twitter is “actively resisting and thwarting his information rights,” as outlined in the settlement.
Last week, the conservative news website Beitbart assured that the discussion between the two businessmen became a real battle, since “hundreds of millions of dollars move from the Gates foundation to 11 of the 26 organizations that urged Twitter advertisers to boycott the company if Musk restores freedom of expression on the platform”.
Gates criticizes Musk during the pandemic
Gates isn’t shy about fighting back when he thinks Musk has crossed the line, like when he sided with the disproven hydroxychloroquine treatment for COVID-19 and dismissed the idea of staying safe by working from home.
At the time, July 2020, Gates told CNBC’s Squawkbox that “Elon’s positioning is to maintain a high level of scandalous comments” and that “it is not very involved in vaccines”.
Musk was quick to tweet his response with a reference to Michael Jackson: “Billy G is not my lover”.
Months later, Musk appeared on a New York Times podcast and called Gates a “knucklehead.” He said that he is far from ignorant about the coronavirus: “In fact, we make the vaccine machines for CureVac, the company you have invested in.”