Billionaire Charlie Munger, 99, Said His Life Worked Better Treating Elon Musk Like He Didn’t ‘Exist’ — ‘I Never Bet Against Him, But I Never Bet With Him’

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The late longtime Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chair Charlie Munger didn't need to dislike a business to stay away from it. Sometimes, he simply decided it belonged in the "too hard" pile.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was a perfect example. Munger respected what Musk had accomplished, but he wasn't interested in taking the same risks that helped get him there.

The two had a history that went back to Tesla's early days.

"I was at a lunch with Munger in 2009 where he told the whole table all the ways Tesla would fail," Musk wrote on X in 2022. "Made me quite sad, but I told him I agreed with all those reasons and that we would probably die , but it was worth trying anyway."

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Tesla obviously didn't die. In fact, its success eventually forced Munger to acknowledge that Musk had accomplished something extraordinary.

At Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting in 2023, Munger said there hadn't been a successful new American auto company in a long time and called Tesla's achievement a "minor miracle." He also acknowledged that Musk had accomplished important things by pursuing problems that seemed almost impossible to solve.

That history made Munger's final interview even more interesting.

The CNBC interview was taped just two weeks before his death at 99. It was originally intended to air around what would have been his 100th birthday, but Munger died on Nov. 28, 2023.

When host Becky Quick brought up Musk, Munger made clear that he still wasn't convinced the Tesla CEO's fortune was as secure as it appeared.

"I don't regard Elon Musk as truly that rich because I don't think it's sure that everything he's working on can work," Munger said. "I think he can get his a** handed to him on autos. I would not invest in Elon Musk's autos myself."

Munger Respected Musk Without Wanting His Risk

Quick then pointed out that Munger had clearly been impressed by what Musk had built.

The answer wasn't a dismissal of Musk's accomplishments. Instead, Munger used the opening to explain what he believed was behind them.

"Again, that's another lesson," Munger said. "What is the lesson of Elon Musk? Somebody who has a perfectly ridiculous amount of money almost always has an element of luck in him.".