Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that people at Tesla did meet with people at Apple, but it’s unlikely that any rumored merger will take place. Musk did say that “if” the talks had anything to do with a possible acquisition, he’d be unable to talk about it anyway.
This comes in response to a big rumor floating around the tech world–one that suggests Apple was in talks to acquire electric vehicle company Tesla. This past weekend, the San Francisco Chronicle quoted an anonymous source who claimed that Adrian Perica, Apple’s merger and acquisitions chief, met with Elon Musk in Cupertino last spring.
“If one or more companies had approached us last year about such things there’s no way we could really comment on that…We had conversations with Apple, I can’t comment on whether those revolved around any kind of acquisition,” said Musk in an interview with Bloomberg TV.
Musk reiterated that Tesla is not for sale, as their main focus in “achieving a compelling, creating a compelling mass-market electric car.”
“I would be very concerned and any kind of acquisition scenario that we would become distracted from that task, which has always been the driving goal of tesla,” said Musk.
True or not, the rumors pushed Tesla stock over $200 for the first time ever earlier this week.
Last month, Musk announced plans to build “the biggest battery plant in the world by far,” saying that Tesla would “do it in partnership with the with some other companies.” We’ll know what that looks like soon, but it’s at least possible that Apple could be one of those “other companies.”
If you were wondering how the financials would look if this were to happen, Apple has stockpiled about $160 billion in cash, and Tesla’s market cap sits at an estimated $24 billion. But once again, this is a highly unlikely pairing.
Image via Elon Musk, Twitter