Tesla Inc. CEO, Elon Musk has revealed that Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook refused to take a meeting with him years ago to discuss acquiring Tesla, Musk said on Tuesday.
Musk said in a tweet on Tuesday, he reached out to Apple CEO Tim Cook “to discuss the possibility of Apple acquiring Tesla (for one-tenth of our current value). He refused to take the meeting.” As of the close of trading Tuesday, Tesla’s market value is $616 billion, one-tenth of that is $61.6 billion.
Musk said he sought out the meeting with the iPhone makers CEO “during the darkest days of the Model 3 program,” a reference to the time when Tesla spent extravagantly as it drove up output of its mass-market Model 3 electric vehicle. Musk told employees at that time at the Fremont plant that it faced a period of “production hell” for six months or longer. He also tweeted about sleeping on the roof of a factory as he tried to resolve bottlenecks, weeks after making the statement to his employees. As recently as 2018, the electric car making company was struggling to meet its vehicle production goals and turn a profit.
In recent years, a number of ex-Tesla executives who are experts in self-driving technology, have been brought in by Apple, while also acquiring companies that specialize in self-driving car development, indicating that Apple is considering entering the market.
An Apple spokesman declined to comment on Musk’s remarks and Tesla did not reply to a request for a comment on the timing of the offer Musk has talked about in his tweet.
Since the beginning of 2017, Tesla has gained roughly 1,400% in share value but is still worth less than a third of Apple’s market capitalization. This week, Tesla’s stocks have slipped while Apple’s climbed after a Reuters report that Apple is aiming to produce a driverless car for consumers in 2024.
Musk’s comment about Apple came a day after Tesla has become the world’s most valuable automaker and among the top 10 biggest US companies in the S&P 500 index. Tesla has posted five consecutive quarters of profit, and as a result, investors have bid up the shares.
