Rumor Warren Buffett bought Tesla is April Fools' Day joke

view original post

The fictional story claimed he made the purchase with cash.

Published April 2, 2025

Image courtesy of Getty Images/Snopes illustration

“);
}
else if(is_tablet()){
slot_number++;
document.write(“

“);
}

Claim:

Warren Buffett acquired Tesla for $1 trillion in April 2025.

On April 1, 2025, internet users shared a rumor that investor Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway bought Tesla, billionaire Elon Musk’s electric car company, for $1 trillion.

Snopes readers searched our website for information, or wrote messages to the newsroom, about the rumor — examples of which appeared on social media platforms including X (archived), Facebook (archived) and Reddit (archived).

(Facebook)

In short, it was not true that Buffett bought Tesla for $1 trillion — or for any other amount.

Rather, the claim originated from an article (archived) labeled as an April Fools’ Day joke on GOBankingRates, a website that typically publishes non-satirical content about personal financing and investing. The article began:

Legendary investor Warren Buffett has announced that Berkshire Hathaway will acquire Tesla for a staggering $1 trillion in cash. The 94-year-old “Oracle of Omaha,” long known for his disinterest in tech stocks and electric vehicles, reportedly contacted Elon Musk directly to make the unprecedented offer.

“While I’ve publicly maintained that I don’t understand tech companies, I’ve secretly been driving a Cybertruck around my Nebraska neighborhood at night,” Buffett reportedly told investors on an early morning conference call on Tuesday, April 1. 

The article ended with a disclaimer reading, “APRIL FOOLS! This article is entirely satirical and was published on April 1, 2025. Warren Buffett has not acquired Tesla, and all quotes and information in this piece are fictional.”

Confusion over the claim’s legitimacy appeared to, in part, stem from the fact that GOBankingRates partners with other outlets, such as Yahoo Entertainment, to publish its content on their sites. Although the above disclaimer also appeared in the article on Yahoo Entertainment, as an archived version showed, that outlet removed the page.

At Berkshire Hathaway’s annual conference in 2023, Buffett and his longtime business partner, the late Charlie Munger, said they had no plans to invest in or acquire Tesla or any other electric carmaker. Fortune reported that Buffett said at the event, “Charlie and I for long have felt that the auto industry is just too tough.”

Meanwhile, Musk has publicly expressed his desire for Buffett to invest in Tesla, calling it “an obvious move” in a 2024 X post (archived).

The GOBankingRates article isn’t the first April Fools’ Day prank involving Musk that we’ve investigated. In 2023, for example, we addressed a similar type of rumor about him supposedly making plans to turn Alcatraz Island, the former penitentiary, into X’s new headquarters.

For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources that call their output humorous or satirical.

Caroline Wazer is a reporter based in Central New York. She has a Ph.D in history.