Elon Musk was planning to sell Tesla Motors to Google for $6 billion, with the entrepreneur even working on a deal in which he would have actively worked for Google under Larry Page.
The plan was crafted back in 2013, before the company posted their first ever quarterly profit in May of that year, with Musk on the verge of bankruptcy. With sales of the company’s vehicles floundering, Bloomberg reports that Musk contacted his close friend Larry Page, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Google, in order to construct a plan that would see the company purchase Tesla whilst also continuing the manufacturing of the vehicles.
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Under this plan, Google would also have been required to fork out an additional $5 billion in order to produce more factories, with Musk including his own talents in the prospective offer by telling Page that he would work under him in order to ensure the continued development of Tesla Motors. He also wanted a guarantee that Google would not shut down the company before it had created a third-generation electric car aimed at the consumer market.
The Model S was where things started to turn round for Tesla.
According to the report, Page had accepted the deal and the two shook hands, with it looking likely that it would go ahead. However, with there being a few legalities that still needed to be ironed out regarding the pair’s agreed contract, the process took longer than had been anticipated and in the meantime sales of the Model S had increased dramatically, with the company posting an $11 million quarterly profit on $562 million in revenue. Tesla paid off its $465 million loan from the US Department of Energy, and now the company is valued at $26 billion. Inevitably, Elon Musk decided not to sign a deal with Google.
When Bloomberg approached Page he said that he “didn’t want to speculate on rumors,” though considering Musk’s financial woes back in 2013, a deal between he and Page is certainly within the realm of possibility. Fortunately for Musk, that deal never needed to happen.
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