Apple’s CEO Tim Cook refused to take the meeting that could have led to him buying Tesla for one tenth of its current valuation according to Elon Musk
According to Tesla’s Elon Musk, an inspiring entrepreneur for many across the globe, Apple had a chance to buy his company many years ago but even the meeting was denied by its Chief Executive Officer, Tim Cook. He took to Twitter to reveal this information – the same place where many of his comments were not well received and even got him into legal troubles.
He tweeted that he voluntarily reached out to Apple during the brand’s developmental days of the highly ambitious Model 3. He labelled them as “darkest days”, and you would not disagree with him if you knew the downturn in fortunes and the financial troubles for the now most valued automaker in the world, back in the past while bringing forth its most affordable electric sedan.
He approached Mr. Cook for a possible deal and he further noted that he planned to discuss the possibility of selling the EV maker for one-tenth of its current valuation due to the crunch times. This indicates a valuation of around 60 billion USD. Tesla had to through in everything it got and more, to ramp up the production of the volume-based Model 3 back in 2017.
Back then, the worked at the Fremont factory in California faced a period of production hell for more than six months and Musk even slept on the roof of the factory to resolve issues that cropped up during the difficult times. The incident happened around the same period when Apple decided to shift its focus from developing a direct Tesla rival to autonomous driving technologies.
In recent years, Apple recruited many ex-Tesla executives who dealt with self-driving, drivetrain and other departments while buying out firms related to the self-driving tech. The market share of both the brands surged since 2017 and despite gaining more than 1,400 per cent, Tesla’s market capitalization is less than one-third of Apple’s.
Apple is looking to enter the electric vehicle business in the coming years as it will begin production in 2024 focussing on self-driving and AI-based technologies