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- Elon Musk reignited his long-running feud with Jeff Bezos in an X post on Thursday.
- Musk said Bezos told people they should sell their Tesla and SpaceX stock because Donald Trump would lose.
- Bezos said Musk’s claim was “100% not true.”
Elon Musk has taken aim at Jeff Bezos once more, reigniting the war of words between two of the world’s richest people.
In an X post on Thursday, Musk said Bezos had told people to dump their shares in his companies because Donald Trump was bound to lose the presidential election. Hours later, Bezos replied that the claim was “100% not true.”
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Business Insider was unable to confirm the veracity of Musk’s post.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, spent more than $130 million supporting Trump’s reelection bid. He stumped for Trump onstage at campaign rallies and warned on X that America would “fall to tyranny” if the former president wasn’t reelected.
Since the election, Musk has been spending time at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida resort, and has been appointed by the president-elect to co-lead a “Department of Government Efficiency” to reduce wasteful spending.
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He said on X on Wednesday that he’d had little input on the president-elect’s cabinet picks.
Musk’s post about Bezos suggested that the Amazon founder and executive chairman expected Musk’s close ties to Trump to mean Tesla and SpaceX would take a hit if Trump lost the election.
Tesla shares soared 44% between November 4 — the day before the election — and November 11, suggesting investors saw the automaker benefiting from a Trump win. SpaceX isn’t publicly listed, but its shares are traded on private markets.
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Tech and wealth rivals
Musk and Bezos are worth more than $500 billion combined, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
They hold leadership roles at Tesla and Amazon, two of the world’s most valuable companies. They’re rivals in areas such as artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, and self-driving cars, and they both run space companies that compete for government contracts.
As a result, any personal animosity that Musk holds toward Bezos could be significant. He’s previously labeled Bezos a copycat, trolled him for being No. 2 on the rich list, complained about his lawsuits against SpaceX, and posted: “Time to break up Amazon. Monopolies are wrong!”
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Thomas Roulet, a professor of organizational sociology and leadership at the University of Cambridge, told BI in an email: “We can definitely expect Elon Musk to exploit his proximity to the Trump administration, especially in areas where he faces direct competition from other tech firms and when regulations can make or break economic success — self-driving cars, for example. This message about Bezos is a way to give himself an excuse to legitimately do so, by saying that ‘Bezos started it.'”
Bezos has voiced skepticism at Musk’s vision of colonizing Mars and once suggested that Musk’s takeover of Twitter, now X, could make things complicated for Tesla in China.
Musk has clashed with other tech leaders, including Bill Gates. He took umbrage at the Microsoft cofounder for shorting Tesla stock, questioning why Gates would bet against a clean-energy company while ringing the alarm on the climate crisis.
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Amazon, Tesla and representatives for Trump didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
November 21, 2024: This story has been updated to include Bezos’ response to Musk’s Thursday X post.