Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have been rivals for years.
Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images and Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Elon Musk has stoked his ongoing rivalry with Jeff Bezos.
He responded, seemingly sarcastically, “maybe it’s coincidence” to another entrepreneur suggesting Bezos copies his ideas.
The 15-year feud stems partly from their competing commercial space businesses.
Elon Musk’s beef with Jeff Bezos continues.
Responding to a tweet suggesting the Amazon founder “copies” every business move he makes, Musk said, apparently sarcastically: “Maybe it’s a coincidence.”
Musk was responding to a tweet from Kim Dotcom, the New Zealand-based German internet entrepreneur who has been fighting extradition to the US for the best part of two decades for charges relating to his file-sharing site Megaupload.com. Dotcom is prolific on Twitter and regularly interacts with Musk on the platform.
—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
Musk has been feuding with Jeff Bezos for some 15 years and regularly accuses him of being a copycat. The pair have overlapping interests, and often trade places as the world’s richest person. Musk currently sits at number two, behind French luxury tycoon Bernard Arnault, while Bezos is fifth, per Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.
Musk previously took issue with Amazon announcing plans to launch more than 3,000 internet satellites, rivalling SpaceX’s Starlink. He commented again in June 2020 when Amazon acquired self-driving-car startup Zoox, potentially rivalling Tesla.
More recently, Bezos backed Synchron, a company that focuses on finding ways to enable people to control computers with their minds. Alongside Bill Gates and other investors, the startup received $75 million in funding, part of it from Bezos Expeditions, Bloomberg reported. Musk, meanwhile, is the founder of neural-interface firm Neuralink, which is trying to develop a device that could be embedded in a person’s brain to record brain activity and potentially stimulate it.
The two compete most intensely in commercial space, though it’s debatable that Bezos “copied” Musk here. The Amazon founder has long had an interest in space exploration, starting up spaceflight firm Blue Origin in 2000. Musk founded his own commercial space firm SpaceX two years later.
The two firms have clashed over lawsuits, patents, and rocket launches over the years.
In 2013, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance filed a formal protest after SpaceX tried to get exclusive use of a NASA launchpad. Musk said the move was a “phony blocking tactic” and told Space News that Blue Origin had “not yet succeeded in creating a reliable suborbital spacecraft, despite spending over 10 years in development.” NASA ultimately sided with SpaceX.
Musk, 51, did appear to compliment his rival in an interview with The New York Times in 2020 but also implied that Bezos was too old to make progress on space travel, even though there’s only a seven-year age gap between the two tech moguls.
On Tuesday, insiders told Bloomberg that SpaceX was offering to sell shares at a price that would raise the closely held company’s valuation to about $140 billion. Blue Origin remains privately held.
Insider approached Bezos and Musk for comment.