Elon Musk Declined Dinner With Boss Of $1.7 Trillion Fund That Voted Against His Pay Deal: 'friends Are As Friends Do'

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is worth almost $430 billion.

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• Elon Musk declined to have dinner with the head of Norway's $1.7 trillion oil fund, text messages show.
• Nicolai Tangen's fund voted against Musk's Tesla pay package, now worth about $100 billion.
• Musk said it would be "very difficult and expensive" to come, and lectured Tangen about friendship.

Elon Musk turned down a dinner invitation from the head of Norway's $1.7 trillion sovereign wealth fund — and lectured him on how to be a better friend — after his firm voted against the Tesla CEO's huge pay package.

Norges Bank Investment Management, one of Tesla's 10 largest shareholders with a roughly 1% stake, rejected a compensation deal for Musk last June that was worth $56 billion at the time and is now valued at around $100 billion.

Nicolai Tangen, the CEO of NBIM, later invited Musk — along with the bosses of Ferrari, Nestlé, Adidas, DoorDash, and Novo Nordisk — to dinner at his Oslo home ahead of the oil fund's annual investment conference this coming April.

"This would be very difficult and expensive for me to attend," Musk replied in October, according to text messages that NBIM provided to Business Insider.

The messages, shown below, were first published by Norwegian newspaper E24 after NBIM released them under freedom of information laws.

Norges Bank Investment Management

"When I ask you for a favor which I very rarely do, and you decline, then you should not ask me for one until you've done something above nothing to make amends," Musk continued. "Friends are as friends do."

Tangen replied that he understood, wished Musk luck, and was cheering him on as a major Tesla shareholder.

A few days later, Musk forwarded messages to Tangen from an unnamed correspondent accusing the Norwegian of giving his text messages to the media and telling them Musk wouldn't be attending the dinner — as well as suggesting Tangen had "political ambitions" and was using NBIM to "promote himself."

Musk asked Tangen whether he had sent his text messages to the press. Tangen explained his communications were public information, he didn't make the decision to release them, and Musk's personal comments that weren't related to the conference hadn't been released.

"The country is obsessed about you, but this is not reflecting badly on you," Tangen added. "Still, sorry for any inconvenience."

Musk's blockbuster pay deal was blocked by a Delaware judge early last year, and again by the same judge in December. NBIM voted against the package at Tesla's annual meeting, saying it was "concerned about the total size of the award, the structure given performance triggers, dilution, and lack of mitigation of key person risk."

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO is the world's richest person with an estimated $428 billion net worth, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

His fortune swelled by more than $200 billion last year as Tesla stock soared 63%, and SpaceX's valuation nearly doubled from $180 billion at the end of 2023 to $350 billion in December.

Musk didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.