At an investor’s conference in New York on Friday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk squashed rumours that they were interested in buying a stake in Swiss mining company Glencore.
As per reports from Reuters, Musk said the following at the conference:
No. We’ve never contemplated investing in Glencore.
In terms of rumour squashing, you cannot get more straightforward than that.
Earlier this week, the Financial Times reported that Tesla was in talks to buy a minority stake in Glencore earlier this year.
The talks broke down as Glencore‘s massive coal business would not align with Tesla’s green goals.
As per those reports, the stake was going to be between ten and twenty per cent.
Although these reports were false, Elon Musk and Tesla are still searching for raw materials to feed EV production.
During Tesla’s Q3 earnings call, Musk was asked about vertically integrating mining for Tesla and had a fascinating response:
Like if there was a great supplier who’s better than us or we think is at least very good, or even where the economics of comparative advantage suggests that we should use that supplier, even if we could beat them, but we could use our resources to do something else that will be more productive, then we would in source in that case. But if we have to go mine, we will mine.
So, only time will tell how Tesla navigates this complicated and potential new space.
You can watch Musk’s full interview below.
