“I'm not Warren Buffet,” he says.
Elon Musk stated this during Tesla's 3rd quarterly report on Wednesday. “I'm not an investor,” he stated flatly. “I'm an engineer, a manufacturer, and a technologist.”
Musk was replying to an analyst's question about whether he would combine all of his businesses, from SpaceX to (soon) Twitter, into a single entity. Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett's investment firm, owns everything from Dairy Queen and Duracell to GEICO and Fruit of the Loom.
Musk, like a picky eater with a divided plate, prefers to keep his businesses separate. “I'm not sure where the overlap is. It's not zero, but I believe we're getting close.”
Musk sees himself as an inventor, not a shareholder.
Elon Musk: There’s a key difference between me and Buffett
“I work, design, and develop products,” he explained. “We're not going to have an investment portfolio or anything.”
In other words, Musk considers himself a completely different type of entrepreneur than Buffett. It harkens back to the 2010s' makers versus takers debate, which centered on the idea that financiers (like Buffett) are moving money around, whereas others are building something that creates new businesses (like Musk).
However, Musk and Buffett may have more in common than Musk realizes. According to Bloomberg, both are billionaires and among the world's top ten richest people.
According to an Oxfam report, the world's ten wealthiest men doubled their fortunes during the pandemic.
“The top 1% have recently gained 20 times more global wealth than the bottom 99%.”
