Elon Musk Tried to Sell Tesla to Apple

In a tweet, Elson Musk confirmed that during the troubled development process for Tesla’s Model 3, he attempted to get a meeting with Tim Cook. His goal was apparently to talk about Apple purchasing the company for what Musk suggests would have been $60 billion.  Today Tesla is valued at $600 billion – Musk’s gain, Apple’s loss.

During the darkest days of the Model 3 program, I reached out to Tim Cook to discuss the possibility of Apple acquiring Tesla (for 1/10 of our current value). He refused to take the meeting.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 22, 2020

The Model 3 manufacturing problems were likely already public at the time that Musk was reaching out to Cook. The latter is known for being a master at operations, and the baggage that would have come from cleaning up Tesla’s issues doesn’t exactly sound all that appealing at any cost. Especially if the company was struggling as much as Musk has said it was.