Tesla CEO Elon Musk has revealed that he once considered selling the electric car maker to Apple.
In a tweet on Tuesday, Elon Musk said he reached out to Apple CEO Tim Cook “to discuss the possibility of Apple acquiring Tesla (for one-tenth of our current value). He refused to take the meeting.”
Elon Musk said he sought out the meeting with Cook during the darkest days of the Model 3 program, a reference to Tesla’s first electric car designed for the mass market.
Tesla’s market value is $616 billion, as of the close of trading Tuesday. One-tenth of that is $61.6 billion.
As recently as 2018, Tesla was struggling to meet its vehicle production goals and turn a profit.
However, Tesla is finally making money on a consistent basis after years of losses and continues to hit milestones for deliveries of its vehicles.
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Its shares have soared 665 per cent this year alone, making it the world’s most valuable automaker and among the top 10 biggest US companies in the S&P 500 index, which Tesla entered on Monday.
Elon Musk’s statement comes a day after Apple revealed that they are interested in manufacturing their own car by 2024.
Apple first launched efforts to build a car from scratch under the Project Titan initiative in 2014. Their lofty car production goals were eventually put on the back burner as the company refocused on the software side.