What did Bill Gates say about Elon Musk? Microsoft co-founder says Tesla owner has been mean to him at times

Microsoft's co-founder Bill Gates recently opened up about his relationship with Tesla founder Elon Musk in an interview with The Independent, published on February 3, 2025. The interview came ahead of Gates' new memoir, Source Code: My Beginnings, which will be released on February 4.

During the interview, Gates claimed that Musk was sometimes "mean" to him. However, he added that he would continue to work with him because the X owner was influential.

“He’s been nice to me at times, and mean to me at times. I will try and work with him because he’s brilliant, he’s rich, he’s influential. I’m in awe of the great work he did at SpaceX and Tesla. The fact that Tesla kind of forced the car industry to do great EVs is a gigantic contribution,” Gates said about Musk.

Elon Musk and Bill Gates have clashed a few times. In March 2023, the SpaceX founder criticized Gates for his understanding of artificial intelligence, calling it "limited" in a tweet.

This followed Bill Gates' involvement with OpenAI after Microsoft invested $1 billion in 2019. For context, Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015; however, he exited the company in 2018 and has been critical of it since then. He called it "a closed source maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft" on X in February 2023.

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Bill Gates accused Elon Musk of "populist stirring"

Bill Gates criticized Elon Musk's political activities in a January 2025 interview with The Times, accusing him of "populist stirring" and attempting to "destabilize the political situations" in foreign countries.

He dubbed Musk's continual social media posts about the UK's political issues as obsessive. Musk had called for Prime Minister Keir Starmer's resignation amid an alleged child grooming scandal in the country. Gates said:

“It’s difficult to understand why someone who has a car factory in both China and in Germany, whose rocket business is ultra-dependent on relationships with sovereign nations and who is busy cutting $2 trillion in U.S. government expenses and running five companies, is obsessing about this grooming story in the U.K. I’m like, what?

“We can all overreach… If someone is super-smart, and he is, they should think how they can help out. But this is populist stirring.”

Gates also discussed Musk's criticism of the leader of the UK Reform Party, Nigel Farage, while reportedly supporting the far-right German party Alternative for Germany (AfD), calling it "insane s**t."

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Bill Gates spoke about meeting President Donald Trump

In his recent interview with The Independent, Bill Gates spoke about meeting with President Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence before his inauguration on January 20. The billionaire said he expected Elon Musk to be present at the conversation.

However, Musk was reportedly absent from the meeting, which was attended by Gates, Trump, and two other staff members. The Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist revealed that he had an "engaging conversation" with the President about "polio and energy and nuclear." He added that Trump was “feeling more comfortable and vindicated than at any time in his life.”

Bill Gates also expressed his astonishment at several Silicon Valley leaders' backing of Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. He said that until about six years ago, many tech heads from Silicon Valley were a "very left-of-center set of people" in line with California's left majority.

"This phenomenon that a lot of people gave big money to Trump, and helped Trump, is a bit of a surprise to me,” Gates added.

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In other news, Bill Gates' upcoming memoir, Source Code: My Beginnings, will reportedly explore the billionaire's first 25 years of life. The memoir will reportedly explore his upbringing, experiences, and hardships until 1979, including the launch of his startup, Traf-O-Data, which later became Microsoft in 1975.