Microsoft’s former CEO Bill Gates met Tesla CEO Elon Musk in March 2022. The two billionaires have a history of having different opinions about several topics including colonisation of Mars. In the bombshell biography of Elon Musk, which was released today, journalist and author Walter Isaacson has revealed that as per Gates, Musk's obsession with Mars and its colonisation was ‘bizarre’.
As per the book, the access to which was provided exclusively to Business Today, Gates, right after his meeting with Musk, told Isaacson, “I’m not a Mars person. He’s overboard on Mars. I let him explain his Mars thinking to me, which is kind of bizarre thinking. It’s this crazy thing where maybe there’s a nuclear war on Earth and so the people on Mars are there and they’ll come back down and, you know, be alive after we all kill each other.”
This is not the first time Gates has taken a jibe at Musk for his Mars thinking. Back in March this year, Bill Gates stated categorically that he will not participate in the "billionaire space race," believing that funding vaccines are more crucial than colonising Mars. This came at a time when the entire world was battling with pandemic and Musk’s SpaceX was planning to send people on Mars with an aim to colonise the Red planet later.
In the book, Isaacson even revealed that Gates found Musk to be ‘very mean’ to him after he found out that Gates shorted Tesla stock. At that time (April 2022), Musk had stated that Gates had taken a half-billion-dollar short position against Tesla.
Gates told Isaacson: “Once he heard I'd shorted the stock, he was super mean to me, but he's super mean to so many people, so you can't take it too personally.” He further explained that his decision was a business move as he anticipated that the supply of electric vehicles would soon outpace demand, which will lead to a price drop.
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