Elon Musk has given Bill Gates a prior warning not to mess with him again. The co-founder of Microsoft will face the erasure of his wealth if he makes any further attempts to bet against Tesla. Musk believes that he will turn the car manufacturer into a whopping $30 trillion AI giant once Tesla completes its shift from selling electric vehicles primarily to running a profitable fleet of robotaxi and humanoid robots, according to Fortune magazine.
Musk tweeted on Tuesday: "Once Tesla fully solves self-driving and has [its] Optimus in mass production, anyone still shorting the stock will get wiped out. Even if it's Bill Gates." The rivalry between the two became public after a leaked exchange in 2022 showed that the world's richest businessman refused to support Gates's philanthropic efforts when he learned that Gates still had a short position worth half a billion dollars betting against Tesla's stock.
In the undated text messages, Musk wrote: "Sorry, but I can't take your charitable work on climate change seriously when you have a massive short position against Tesla, the company doing its best to solve climate change." By the time those messages leaked, Gates was already regretting his bearish forecasts about Tesla. It is unclear whether he still holds a position in the stock.
However, Musk's warning that open short positions will be "wiped out" is a bold claim from someone whose company was the worst performer in the S&P 500 this year. Tesla's vehicle sales dropped by 6.6% in the first half of the year; its Cybertruck has struggled to meet high expectations; and finally, Tesla's goal to scale from 1.8 million electric vehicles last year to 20 million by 2030 has been buried.
In fact, the Tesla CEO has been recovering since he set a stock floor in April. First, he promoted the unveiling of a new model for robotaxi called "CyberCab," implicitly suggesting that the self-driving issue would finally be resolved. Then he announced that 2025 might see a return of electric vehicle sales growth through new low-cost models.
Ongoing concerns about Musk potentially stepping down due to the loss from the 2018 compensation deal—now valued at $70 billion at the current stock price—were mitigated last month when its second-largest shareholder, Vanguard, joined others in supporting him.
Finally, Tesla revealed on Tuesday that it managed to avoid a sharper decline in car sales in the second quarter by clearing excess inventory. Reducing electric vehicle production to its lowest level since the third quarter of 2022 means it has backup battery cells that it can now pump into its grid storage business, increasing its already weak volume in the first quarter to an unprecedented 9.4 gigawatt-hours deployed.
Tesla has now added $100 billion in market value over the past two days. It is trading at 70 times next year's earnings, a steep multiple even for growth stocks, let alone those expected to see revenue and profit shrink in 2024.
