Elon Musk aims for the moon. Buffett and Monger want fewer failures.

• Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger focus on Elon Musk at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting.
• They said that the head of Tesla handles complex problems, which leads to great victories and losses.
• “We don’t want that much failure,” Munger said, explaining why they took less risks than Musk.

The investment duo said Elon Musk dreams bigger and tackles more difficult problems than Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, which means he sometimes achieves great things but often fails.

“He wouldn’t have achieved what he has in life if he hadn’t tried unreasonably extreme goals,” Munger, vice president of Berkshire Hathaway, said during the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.

“He loves doing the impossible and doing it,” Munger continued. “We’re different. Warren and I are looking for an easy job.”

“We don’t want this kind of failure,” the 99-year-old investor added.

Buffett, the 92-year-old CEO of Berkshire, agreed that Musk is focused on tougher challenges than he or Munger want to take on.

“It’s a dedication to solving the impossible, and he’ll make it happen every now and then,” Buffett said. “But it would be torture for me or Charlie.”

The Berkshire boss said Musk’s all-encompassing lifestyle doesn’t appeal to him, but that the Tesla boss “wouldn’t enjoy being in my shoes either.”

Musk welcomed comments from two legendary stock pickers. “Appreciate the kind words from Warren and Charlie,” he said chirp.

Both Buffett and Munger have credited Musk for successfully expanding Tesla into a major automaker in the fiercely competitive auto industry. Musk, who dreams of colonizing Mars, also pioneered reusable rocket technology at SpaceX and witnessed major failures and spectacular explosions in the process.

Musk has distanced himself from Buffett in recent years, describing himself as a business and product builder rather than an investor. He acknowledged Buffett’s expertise, but called the Berkshire chief’s task of studying companies and allocating capital “extremely tedious.”

However, the tech billionaire recently said that Buffett would be the ideal US Treasury secretary, as the Berkshire chief could do the job in less than one hour a week.

Musk also blasted Buffett and Monger for passing on an investment opportunity in Tesla at a $200 million valuation in 2008. The automaker now commands a market capitalization north of $500 billion.