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Home/America COVID-19/Corona Updates/COVID-19/US Corona/Elon Musk and Bill Gates have bickered over everything from climate change to the pandemic. Here's where their disagreements began and everything that's happened since.
Elon Musk and Bill Gates have bickered over everything from climate change to the pandemic. Here's where their disagreements began and everything that's happened since.
Bill Gates and Elon Musk don't exactly see eye to eye.
While the Microsoft billionaire and the Tesla and SpaceX titan have never seemed to have a particularly cozy relationship, things have heated up over the past few years as the two have openly sparred about everything from electric vehicles to the pandemic.
The two moguls are among the world's wealthiest, with Musk in 1st place and Gates in 4th, behind Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and LVMH Chairman Bernard Arnault. While their public spats may not always be serious, they do appear to fundamentally disagree on how to fight disease; climate change; cryptocurrency, and the importance of space travel.
Here's where the friction between Gates and Musk began and everything that's happened since.
Things first became tense between Gates and Musk in 2020. At the time, they were both involved in fighting the coronavirus — Gates pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to fight the virus, while Musk was working to source and produce ventilators. Musk had also teamed up with the German biotech firm CureVac (in which Gates is an investor) to make a device to aid in vaccine production.
But Musk was also frequently downplaying the severity of the virus and strongly criticizing stay-at-home orders. He'd promoted the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment, falsely said that children are immune to the virus, and questioned coronavirus-deaths data.
Elon Musk.
Gates took issue with Musk's behavior regarding the virus. "Elon's positioning is to maintain a high level of outrageous comments ... I hope that he doesn't confuse areas he's not involved in too much," Gates said on CNBC's "Squawk Box."
Bill Gates.
The comments struck a nerve with Musk, who taunted Gates on Twitter. Musk jokingly posted multiple tweets about Gates, writing "Billy G is not my lover" and "The rumor that Bill Gates & I are lovers is completely untrue."
Elon Musk.
During a podcast interview with The New York Times in September 2020, Musk defended his role in coronavirus relief efforts. "Gates said something about me not knowing what I was doing," Musk said. "It's like, 'Hey, knucklehead, we actually make the vaccine machines for CureVac, that company you're invested in.'"
Elon Musk.
But another major source of tension between Gates and Musk appears to be climate change — specifically, how big of an impact Tesla has in reducing emissions and helping the planet.
AP/Jae C. Hong/Yana Paskova/Getty/Business Insider composite
During a 2020 interview with the YouTuber Marques Brownlee, Gates said that while Tesla had helped to drive innovation and adoption of electric vehicles, he'd recently bought a different electric car, a Porsche Taycan.
The 2022 Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo Turbo S, an electric car similar to the one Gates purchased.
Musk also took issue with a blog post Gates wrote that questioned whether it was practical to make vehicles like 18-wheelers fully electric. Though he didn't mention Tesla, the company is developing a semi, and when a Twitter user asked Musk about his opinion of Gates' comments, Musk replied, "he has no clue."
Bill Gates.
Gates has issued Musk a few rare compliments over the years. During a podcast interview in 2021, Gates said that what Musk has accomplished with Tesla is "one of the greatest contributions to climate change anyone's ever made" and said that "underestimating Elon is not a good idea."
But Gates has also touted his own climate contributions over Musk's. "I give a lot more to climate change than Elon or anyone else," Gates said during a June 2022 interview with French YouTuber Hugo Décrypte. "I give a lot of philanthropic dollars, I back companies — you know, electric cars are about 16% of emissions, so we also need to solve that other 84%."
Bill Gates at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, in November 2021.
And while space exploration — specifically, colonizing Mars — is a main focus of Musk's, Gates isn't impressed. During an interview on a New York Times podcast in early 2021, Gates said that while he may be missing something, he's "not a Mars person ... I don't think rockets are the solution." He added that he'd rather spend his money on vaccines here on Earth than on space travel.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk at the unveiling of the SpaceX Dragon V2 spacecraft in 2014.
Gates has also taken issue with the mania surrounding cryptocurrencies, which Musk has helped fuel online. He noted how much energy bitcoin uses, making it not very environmentally friendly, and warned investors not to dump money into bitcoin like Tesla has. "My general thought would be that if you have less money than Elon, you should probably watch out," he said.
Bill Gates.
Though Musk recently said he's "moving on" from making fun of Gates, he's done his fair share of mocking the Microsoft founder over the years. He once tweeted an anti-vaccine political cartoon about Gates, and he recently mocked Gates' weight online.
Elon Musk.
Musk has also publicly taken issue with Gates over what he says is Gates' multimillion-dollar short position against Tesla. Tesla short-sellers have been a frequent target of Musk's over the years, to the point where he's argued that the practice should be illegal.
In a leaked text-message exchange between the two billionaires, which Musk said is legitimate, Gates seems to confirm that he's betting against Tesla, but says he'd still like to work on a climate-focused philanthropic opportunity together. "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 replied.
Gates recently seemed to imply, during the interview with YouTuber Hugo Décrypte, that the issue is Musk's, not his. When asked whether they're friends, Gates replied, "I like him. I think he does great work. I don't know him very well."
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