Musk Says Apple Once ‘Carpet Bombed’ Tesla Engineers With Recruiting Calls, Offering Double Pay During Now-Scrapped EV Program

Elon Musk has revealed that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) aggressively targeted Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) engineers with nonstop recruiting calls and lucrative pay offers during the iPhone maker’s now-abandoned push to build an electric vehicle.

Earlier this week, speaking during a wide-ranging, more than two-and-a-half-hour conversation with Stripe co-founder John Collison and podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, Musk said Tesla became a prime recruiting target when Apple was developing its electric car program, which was later shelved.

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The tech billionaire described Apple’s approach as unusually aggressive, saying that Tesla engineers were inundated with calls from recruiters.

“They were carpet bombing Tesla with recruiting calls,” Musk said. “Engineers just unplugged their phones.”

According to Musk, Apple’s offers were often made without formal interviews and came with significantly higher compensation.

“Their opening offer without any interview would be like double the compensation at Tesla,” he said.

Musk said Tesla’s location in Silicon Valley made it easier for rivals to lure employees, as engineers could switch jobs without uprooting their lives.

He added that Tesla’s engineering-heavy culture also made its workforce highly attractive to companies looking to accelerate innovation.

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The recruiting pressure intensified during periods when Tesla was performing well, Musk said, noting that success itself made the company more vulnerable to talent raids.

Musk pushed back against what he called the “Tesla pixie dust” myth — the idea that hiring executives or engineers from high-profile companies automatically leads to success.

“There’s no magical pixie dust,” Musk said. “People are people.”

He acknowledged falling into the same trap himself by assuming talent from companies like Google or Apple would immediately succeed elsewhere, calling that belief misguided.

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Dwarkesh was most interested in how Elon is going to make space datacenters work. I was most interested in Elon’s method for attacking hard technical problems, and why it hasn’t been replicated as much as you… pic.twitter.com/28Lw9rAqlN