‘Elon and I hugged it out’: Jamie Dimon says Elon Musk is ‘our Einstein’

JPMorgan Chase (JPM-0.66%) CEO Jamie Dimon thinks Elon Musk is a modern-day Albert Einstein.

“The guy is our Einstein,” Dimon said of Musk, the Tesla (TSLA-1.42%) and SpaceX CEO who has become a top ally to President Donald Trump. “I’d like to be helpful to him and his companies as much as we can.”

Musk, the world’s richest person, now wields considerable power in the White House, after helping Trump secure a second term. Musk is tasked with heading the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which was initially pitched as a means of finding as much as $2 trillion in federal spending cuts, but which appears to have shifted its focus to updating software and reducing headcount.

Dimon, in an interview with CNBC (CMCSA-0.84%) at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said that he recently mended fences with Musk after JPMorgan dropped its $162 million lawsuit against the electric vehicle maker.

“Elon and I hugged it out,” Dimon said. “He came to one of our conferences. He and I had a nice, long chat. We settled some of our differences.”

In a suit filed against Tesla in 2021, JPMorgan alleged that the company breached a 2014 stock warrant deal after the bank lowered the exercise price. Under the contract, if Tesla stock traded above a certain price, it would owe JPMorgan money in either shares or cash.

JPMorgan claimed the stock warrants became more valuable following a 2018 tweet by Musk in which he said he was considering taking the company private at a share price of $420, and that “funding [was] secured.” The post caused Tesla’s price to surge, before dipping weeks later after he said he wouldn’t follow through with the idea.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Musk with securities fraud in September 2018 over the tweets. Musk and Tesla each paid $20 million in civil fines to settle the charges.

Tesla countersued in 2023, alleging that JPMorgan took advantage of the tweet to reduce the strike price of millions of warrants in an attempt to catch a windfall from the deal.

JPMorgan dropped the lawsuit without prejudice last November. At the time, a JPMorgan spokesperson said that the two firms “have decided to enter into a new commercial relationship and settle the outstanding disputes between the companies.”

“This is a good outcome for all and we look forward to working together,” the spokesperson said.