As some of you might have heard, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk had at a point in time tried to sell the company to Apple. This was revealed in Musk’s biography where he revealed that Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, wasn’t interested in such a deal and didn’t even bother taking the meeting, but that might not have been the entire story.
According to Tim Higgins, a report for the Wall Street Journal, he reveals in his book Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk and the Bet of the Century that apparently one of the conditions of Musk selling Tesla to Apple was that he would become the CEO of Apple. The book says that Musk told Cook, “I’m CEO”, which Cook took to mean that Musk would remain the CEO of Tesla.
Well, this is a different perspective on Apple not buying Tesla https://t.co/Fn6yvfrxlP pic.twitter.com/T1xcIHCQCp
— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) July 30, 2021
He told Musk that he was not opposed to the idea, which Musk then clarified to mean that he wanted to be the CEO of Apple. Cook then responded with some choice words before hanging up the phone. It’s an entertaining story, although we’re not sure how accurate it is, especially when Musk responded to it in his tweet claiming that he has never spoken to or written to each other.
Cook & I have never spoken or written to each other ever.
There was a point where I requested to meet with Cook to talk about Apple buying Tesla. There were no conditions of acquisition proposed whatsoever.
He refused to meet. Tesla was worth about 6% of today’s value.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 30, 2021
He maintains that he did request a meeting with Cook but that was rejected. As for Cook, he did state in an interview in 2021 that he has never spoken to Musk, but has “great admiration and respect” for Tesla.
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