Clash of the Billionaires: Bill Gates Says Musk Is “Mean” to Him, but He’s “Brilliant” AJ Tiarsmith Fri, October 16, 2026 at 3:45 AM EDT 6 min read TSLA -1.29% SPCX -2.33% MSFT +1.08% CRWV +5.94% Explore stocks on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
Tesla trades at ~377x earnings despite negative free cash flow, while SpaceX's AI segment surged 247% to $2.56B in Q2.
After building Microsoft, Gates now races to give away $9 billion in 2026 as his foundation heads toward a 2045 closure.
Musk claims Gates' Tesla short has already cost him over $10 billion, yet Gates still calls Musk 'brilliant, rich, and influential.'
Just released. Our analysts combed the entire stock market and named the ten best stocks to buy right now, and Tesla didn't make the cut. Enter your email to see the names that beat TSLA. The report is free. Enter your email and see if any of your stocks made the cut.
Bill Gates and Elon Musk have clashed over a Tesla short, over philanthropy and over politics, and Gates still keeps coming back to the same view of Musk: he is brilliant. Investors should care about that tension because Musk controls two of the most valuable companies on the market. Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) is worth about $1.43 trillion, and SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) is worth about $1.14 trillion. Barchart put Gates' comments back in circulation on October 15, 2026.
Bill Gates Says Despite Elon Musk Being Mean to Him, He's Still 'In Awe' of His Work. 'He's Brilliant, He's Rich, He's Influential'
Gates made the remarks in an interview with The Independent published February 3, 2025, one day before his memoir Source Code came out. "He's been nice to me at times, and mean to me at times," Gates said. "I will try and work with him because he's brilliant, he's rich, he's influential."
Why Didn't TSLA Make The Top 10 List?
24/7 Wall St has helped investors make money for over two decades, and our top analysts just finished ranking the definitive Top 10 Stocks To Buy Now. Not the ten biggest companies. Not the ten everyone is arguing about. The ten best stocks to buy right now.
The report is free, and you can see why we think each stock is a top investment today.
Enter Your Email and See the Ten →
Gates built Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and then turned to philanthropy, where his wealth goes into a foundation that is scheduled to close. Musk puts his money back into new ventures: electric cars, rockets, satellites, humanoid robots and AI data centers, while Gates is giving his fortune away on a deadline. Musk keeps reinvesting his into the next moonshot.
Musk has attacked Gates many times over a short position against Tesla stock. In November 2025, Elon Musk said Gates should exit his "crazy short" or add to his $1.5 billion in losses. In December 2025, Elon Musk claimed the position "might have cost over $10 billion by now." Both figures come from Musk.
Tesla's stock has given Musk less to boast about lately. Shares closed at $362.44 and are down 19.41% this year. In Q2, Tesla reported revenue of $28.24B, up 25.5%. Non-GAAP EPS of $0.33 missed the $0.54 estimate. Operating margin contracted to 1.4%, and free cash flow came in at -$1.09B. Even after the drop, the stock trades at about 377 times earnings.
Tesla revealed the next-generation Roadster on October 15, 2026 at a SpaceX test site in McGregor, Texas. Tesla's timer showed it going from zero to 60 miles per hour in under a second. Elon Musk said it would enter production in 2028, and CNBC reported reservations require a $50,000 deposit. Tesla did not announce a price. Musk said the Roadster will be the last Tesla built for a human driver, but CNBC said the car is unlikely to change Tesla's financials in a significant way.
Robotaxis matter much more to the business. Tesla runs its robotaxi service in seven U.S. metros, and active FSD subscriptions reached 1.48 million, up 56%. Musk spoke about this on the July earnings call. He said Tesla wants to scale the service "as fast as humanly possible" while working through the "March of Nines of reliability."
At SpaceX, the AI segment brought in $2.56B in Q2, up 247%. The company spent $15.83B on AI computing in the quarter. SpaceX is aiming 2GW of compute by year end and 10-20GW by end of 2027. The stock closed at $148.62, below its $160.95 close on June 12. Barron's pointed to CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV), linking the recent weakness to CoreWeave's troubles. A gigawatt-scale compute expansion needs power, cooling and networking. We rounded up seven of those suppliers in a free AI infrastructure report, since those inputs have to come from somebody.
The Gates Foundation plans to give away $9 billion in 2026 as it prepares to close in 2045. Bill Gates is also spending $1 billion to keep AI from extending the global divide. In August, the Gates Foundation gave $540 million to a University of Washington health institute, the largest gift in the university's history.
Musk is building rockets, robotaxis and AI data centers, and paying for them with heavy capex. Gates is trying to spend a fortune well before a fixed deadline. In our view, Gates' legacy is the safer one. Vaccines and health research keep paying off after the money runs out, while Musk's legacy depends on autonomy and gigawatt-scale computing delivering returns that Tesla's thin Q2 margin has yet to show.
Musk's ceiling is higher, though. If robotaxis scale and SpaceX's computing expansion reaches its 2027 aiming, history may decide that Gates was right to call him brilliant. Investors should keep an eye on Tesla's next earnings report for signs that robotaxi growth is starting to show up in margins.
If you have cash sitting in your account right now, give this two minutes. After more than two decades of helping investors beat the market, our top analysts at 24/7 Wall St. put together a definitive report on the Top 10 Stocks To Buy Today. And TSLA wasn't one of them.
They combed the entire market. It's not 10 ideas, not 10 stocks everyone is talking about, it's what their research points to as the 10 best stocks to buy right now, and it's free. Read more here and see which stocks made the list -->>
Contact editorial@247wallst.com for any questions or corrections.
