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 cosy 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 first place and Gates in fourth, behind Amazon CEO 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.
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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 criticising 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.
Gates took issue with Musk’s behaviour 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.
The comments struck a nerve with Musk, who taunted Gates on Twitter in response. He jokingly posted multiple tweets about Gates, writing, “Billy G is not my lover” and “The rumour that Bill Gates and I are lovers is completely untrue.”
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.’”
