Tesla co-founder & CEO Elon Musk confirmed on Twitter that he orchestrated the delivery of more than 1,000 ventilators to the U.S.
California Governor Gavin Newsom initially announced last night that Musk delivered 1,000 ventilators to the state. After some back-and-forth discussion on the social media platform regarding where Musk got the devices, the entrepreneur chimed in.
Musk wrote that China had an oversupply, so he bought 1,255 FDA-approved ventilators from ResMed (NYSE:RMD), Philips (NYSE:PHG) and Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) on Friday night and air-shipped them to Los Angeles. He ended the Tweet by saying, “If you want a free ventilator installed, please let us know!”
He also followed it up with a Tweet to thank his Tesla China team, China Customs Authority and Los Angeles International Airport customs for all acting swiftly on the matter.
Last week, Musk took to Twitter to say that his company “will make ventilators if there is a shortage.” Musk made the comment in a thread in which he claimed the panic surrounding the virus is more dangerous than the virus itself, and has also used the social media platform to question if there is in fact a shortage of ventilators.
On Saturday, Musk had Tweeted that he had a “long engineering discussion” with Medtronic about the medtech giant’s state-of-the-art ventilators, calling the Fridley, Minn.-based company a “very impressive team.”
Medtronic replied by saying that “addressing COVID-19 is a group effort. We are grateful for the discussion with Elon Musk and Tesla as we work across industries to solve problems and get patients and hospitals the tools they need to continue saving lives. We’re all in this together.”
