Elon Musk confirms he turned down Bill Gates on climate change collaboration over shorting Tesla

Elon Musk has confirmed leaked texts between himself and Bill Gates, in which he brutally shut down the Microsoft founder’s offer to work together.

Elon Musk confirmed Friday that he rejected working with Bill Gates on climate change via text because the Microsoft co-founder was shorting Tesla.

In the texts, the two billionaires appear set to meet somewhere before Musk asks Gates if he still has a “half billion dollar short position against Tesla”.

Gates replies, “Sorry to say I haven’t closed it yet,” adding in another text, “I would like to discuss philanthropy possibilities.”

Musk replies that he can’t take Gates’ philanthropy on climate change “seriously when you have a massive short position against Tesla, the company doing the most to solve climate change”.

So apparently Bill Gates hit up @elonmusk to discuss “philanthropy on climate change” but Elon asked if he still had a half billion dollar short position on $TSLA.

Bill said he hasn’t closed it out, so Elon told him to get lost. No idea if this is true lol pic.twitter.com/iuHkDG3bAd

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

Yeah, but I didn’t leak it to NYT. They must have got it through friends of friends.

I heard from multiple people at TED that Gates still had half billion short against Tesla, which is why I asked him, so it’s not exactly top secret.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 23, 2022

The SpaceX billionaire on Friday night confirmed the veracity of a screenshot of the text exchange posted on Twitter by @WholeMarsBlog who wrote “No idea if this is true lol” and asked Musk about it.

“Yeah,” Musk answered, “but I didn’t leak it to NYT. They must have got it through friends of friends. I heard from multiple people at TED that Gates still had half billion short against Tesla, which is why I asked him, so it’s not exactly top secret.”

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Bill Gates reached out to Elon Musk about ‘philanthropy’. Picture: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP

Elon Musk turned him down for shorting Tesla. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

Shorting means that an investor borrows stock with the assumption that it will go down, profiting them.

Musk also trolled Gates with a vulgar tweet Friday comparing a photo of the Seattleite to a pregnant man emoji.

It didn’t appear The New York Times had reported on the texts as of early Sunday.

The Tesla CEO didn’t say when the exchange happened and it wasn’t clear where the screenshot originated.

Gates has yet to publicly comment on the texts.

The two businessmen have been at odds in the past.

This article originally appeared on Fox News and was reproduced with permission