Walter Isaacson has spent two years preparing the biography of Elon Musk that will be released tomorrow and, in this process, the writer reveals curiosities that the tycoon has been telling him. According to what is known, for the book he has not relied on statements from Musk but from family, friends, co-workers, people who have known him at some point and also enemies.
A few days ago, information was advanced that will come in the book, such as that the now leader of
Today we know the story of how Musk and Bill Gates, one of the founders of Microsoft, They met and what their relationships were like, through which Gates wanted the billionaire to participate in one of his philanthropy projects.
If you want a spoiler… they didn’t end up well. But it is worth reading the full story because it has many curiosities.
Musk had money to donate
They both met at a meeting at the beginning of last year 2022. They already knew each other from the past although they were not friends. Gates had taken his son to see SpaceX and Musk could feel connection with a person who had created a great company working hard.
“Hey, I’d love to meet up and talk about philanthropy and climate,” Bill Gates told Elon Musk at the time. According to Isaacson himself on CNBC, Musk’s stock sales had led him, for tax reasons, to allocate $5.7 billion to a charitable fund that he had established. Gates wanted to give him ideas on what to do with that money.
Musk accepted and there Gates learned that the Tesla leader does not have an assistant, secretary or a person who is in charge of his meetings and schedules because he prefers to do it himself. In that case, Gates found it strange that one of his assistants called Musk, so he did it directly. They agreed to meet in Texas in March 2022. Something they did. The meeting began at the Tesla factory with Musk giving Bill Gates a tour.
At that moment the first misunderstanding began. Anyone who knows anything about Bill Gates knows that he is a climate change activist. And during the visit to the factory, the former Microsoft leader was criticizing certain issues related to sustainability. Gates appears to have told Musk that batteries could never power large trucks and that solar energy would not be a big part of solving the climate problem. What was positive is that the former Microsoft leader praised his knowledge of each machine and each part of the factory process, according to the Tesla leader.
At the time, things seemed to be going well, although Musk called philanthropy “bullshit” and claimed that only 20 cents for every dollar donated made it to its destination, a claim Gates refuted. One of the heads behind Windows told him about projects with a lot of impact and Musk liked what he heard so they agreed that he would be sent a detailed summary of each of them.
With all this, there came a topic that bothered Musk. Gates had cut his Tesla shares, because he thought the value would go down, although he was wrong. In fact, he lost $1.5 billion on it and Musk had found out and was angry. Gates He even apologized when the Tesla leader brought up the subject, angry. Or that’s what he said.
Musk considers how someone who wants to fight climate change can abandon the commitment to electric cars like those manufactured by Tesla. “It is pure hypocrisy. “Why make money off the failure of a sustainable energy car company?” Musk argued.
Gates has also told the writer Walter Isaacson about this meeting that Elon Musk was very blunt with him, but “since he is very rude with so many people“You don’t have to take it personally.”
What about Mars
Something that also led to a disagreement on their walk through the Tesla factory is that for Elon Musk the planet Mars is very important and it is not so important for Bill Gates.
According to the words of the founder of Microsoft to the writer Isaacson, it seems that Musk is obsessed with Mars: “I let him Explain to me your thoughts on Mars, which is a bit of a strange thought.”
It seems that the South African tycoon told him that there could be a nuclear war on Earth and then the people on Mars are there and will come to our planet and that “will be alive after we all kill each other”.
Via | CNBC
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Image | Xataka