Elon Musk claims he confronted Bill Gates about Tesla shorting

IN A TWEET ON FRIDAY, Tesla CEO Elon Musk admitted that he asked Gates if he was shorting Tesla stock. It's not the first time the 2 men have clashed in public.

"I heard from so much people at TED that Gates was still half a billion dollars short against Tesla, so I asked him," Musk said in the tweet. He responded to a Twitter user's inquiry about whether a screenshot of a rumored text conversation between the two billionaires was genuine.

"Yeah, but I didn't leak it to the NYT," Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded. They must have obtained it from friends of friends."

News was unable to independently verify the text exchange in which Musk asked Gates, "Do you still have a half-billion-dollar short position against Tesla?"

"Sorry to say I have not closed it out, " Gates responded. I want to talk about philanthropic opportunities." "Sorry, I cannot take your climate change philanthropy seriously when you have a huge short position against Tesla, the company doing the so much to solve climate change," Musk responded.

Last year, Gates told New York Times opinion writer Kara Swisher, "It's important to say that what Elon did with Tesla is one of the greatest contributions to climate change that anyone has ever made." And, as we all know, underestimating Elon is a bad idea." Gates emphasized the importance of tackling other industries to have a more significant impact on climate change.

"We're not doing enough on the hard stuff: steel, cement, meat," he said. "Unfortunately, the things that people think about electricity, passenger cars are only a third of the problem."