World’s richest man Elon Musk mocks rival Jeff Bezos

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, newly minted as the world’s richest man, has sent a mocking message to his rival, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Elon Musk is now the world’s richest man, surpassing the wealth of Jeff Bezos.

Elon Musk has sent Jeff Bezos a silver medal after the Tesla CEO surpassed the Amazon founder to become the world’s richest person.

Mr Musk sent a cheeky silver medal emoji after Mr Bezos posted a message about overcoming adversity.

“Listen and be open, but don’t let anybody tell you who you are. This was just one of the many stories telling us all the ways we were going to fail,” Mr Bezos tweeted alongside an image of a Barron’s cover story from 1999 calling Mr Bezos “just another middleman.

“Today, Amazon is one of the world’s most successful companies and has revolutionised two entirely different industries,” Mr Bezos added.

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— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 11, 2021

Shortly after midnight, Mr Musk responded with a silver medal emoji, something he had promised to send to the Amazon founder now that Mr Musk is worth almost US$30 billion more than Mr Bezos.

Mr Musk’s net worth soared last week in part thanks to the new US$100.3 billion valuation of his SpaceX company. Most of his wealth is still tied to Tesla’s stock price.

Mr Musk now boasts a net worth of US$222 billion while Bezos’ remains at US$191 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Elon Musk is now the world’s richest man, surpassing the wealth of Jeff Bezos.

Last month, Mr Musk warned that the tease would be coming.

“I’m sending a giant statue of the digit ‘2’ to Jeffrey B., along with a silver medal,” Mr Musk said in an email to Forbes.

The tweet is the latest in an increasingly heated public spat between the world’s two richest men.

In addition to duelling for the title of world’s richest person, Mr Musk and Mr Bezos have clashed over their space ambitions.

This summer, Mr Bezos flew to suborbital space on a 10-minute, widely watched launch with his company Blue Origin.

Mr Musk has criticised Blue Origin — and other rival Virgin Galactic — for investing so much in suborbital launches, which he says pale in comparison to the challenges of reaching orbit.

While Musk himself hasn’t yet travelled to space, SpaceX recently launched four civilian astronauts into space for a three-day trip and successfully returned them to Earth — the first mission of its kind.

Behind the scenes, the two companies have been in a multi-year contest for US government contracts.

pic.twitter.com/eLvYOnn6zT

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 27, 2021

In April, NASA awarded a US$2.9 billion contract to SpaceX, passing up on a bid by Blue Origin.

And last month, Mr Bezos’ company sued the space agency, alleging that it unfairly awarded the contract to Mr Musk’s firm.

Mr Musk responded by saying that Bezos’ Blue Origin should spend more time designing and building rockets and less time suing SpaceX.

“If lobbying [and] lawyers could get [you] to orbit, Bezos would be on Pluto [right now],” Mr Musk wrote in a Twitter reply.

Blue Origin, meanwhile, has released infographics in recent weeks that call SpaceX’s Starship rocket dangerous and point out it is “a launch vehicle that has never flown to orbit and is still being designed.”

Separately, Bezos-owned Amazon has filed a complaint against SpaceX with the Federal Communications Commission, urging the regulator to reject the company’s plan to launch more satellites as part of its satellite internet business.

In return, Mr Musk publicly mocked Mr Bezos, who stepped down from his position as CEO of Amazon this summer.

“Turns out Besos [sic] retired in order to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX…” Mr Musk wrote on Twitter in August — misspelling Mr Bezos’ name, instead writing the Spanish word for “kisses.”

For Mr Bezos’ part, he has mocked plans to colonise Mars, a key SpaceX ambition.

“My friends who want to move to Mars, I say, do me a favour and go live on the top of Mount Everest for a year first, and see if you like it, because it’s a garden paradise compared to Mars,” Mr Bezos told SpaceNews in 2019.

This story was published by the New York Post and reproduced with permission.

Originally published as World’s richest man Elon Musk mocks rival Jeff Bezos