Elon Musk Calls Tesla Co-Founder Eberhard 'Pure Poison'

Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk said on Sunday he wished he had never met Martin Eberhard, one of the founders and the first CEO of the electric vehicle company now led by the world’s richest man.

What Happened: Musk said Eberhard is “true poison,” in response to a thread on Twitter, adding the real credit for creating Tesla goes to him and another co-founder JB Straubel, who now runs a battery recycling startup called Redwood Materials.

A Twitter post pointed out how Musk owns significant stakes in Tesla and Twitter Inc TWTR and that in both cases, he came in as a “non-founder investor” who then leads by making “a bunch of product-oriented claims on the internet.”

The post secured a response from another user in defense of Musk, saying “there would be no Tesla” without the billionaire entrepreneur and the company Eberhard and Straubel founded would’ve never become what it is today. 

The only people who pass the but-for test for creating what people know as Tesla are JB & me. Wish I’d never met Eberhard. He is pure poison.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 10, 2022

See Also: Musk On Tesla Founder Martin Eberhard: 'He Is Literally The Worst Person I've Ever Worked With'

Why It Matters: Musk and Eberhard have been publicly critical of each other in the past. The billionaire entrepreneur has said Eberhard "is literally the worst person I've ever worked with." 

Eberhard founded Tesla in 2003 with Marc Tarpenning, with Musk as chairman, and served as its CEO until 2007.

“When Eberhard was fired from the Tesla CEO role in mid-2007 for providing false information to me [and] the board, no one left with him. That says it all,” Musk wrote on Twitter in Oct. 2020.

Musk was recently named to Twitter's board after he recently revealed a 9.12% active stake in the microblogging company.

Price Action: Tesla stock closed 3% lower at $1,025.49 a share on Friday.