Elon Musk has aimed another jibe at Jeff Bezos by suggesting he’s going to send him a silver medal and a gigantic statue of the number two after he overtook him to become the richest man in the world.
Amazon CEO and Entrepreneur Bezos and Musk have been battling it out at the top of the wealth charts for ages now, and this Monday (27 September) the Tesla and SpaceX supremo became only the third person in history to be worth more than $200 billion (£148bn), according to Forbes.
Also according to the same publication, Musk now plans to send a permanent reminder to his rival, in the form of a silver medal and statue of the number two.
It’s not exactly subtle, is it?
In an email, Musk said: “I’m sending a giant statue of the digit ‘2’ to Jeffrey B., along with a silver medal.”
Bezos was actually the first across the $200 billion mark in August 2020, followed by LVMH LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton owner Bernard Arnault more recently.
Now Musk has slammed through that barrier, with he and Bezos jostling for position at the top on a few occasions.
This isn’t the first time Musk has taken a pop at his Amazon counterpart, either.
When Bezos protested against NASA’s decision to award Musk’s SpaceX company a $2.9 billion contract for a mission to take humans to the moon, Elon tweeted: “Can’t get it up (to orbit) lol.”
Then, last month, Amazon’s subsidiary Kuiper wrote a protest letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) about SpaceX plans to expand the Starlink satellite network.
Musk again used Twitter to poke his opponent at the top of the rich leagues, suggesting that Bezos had ‘retired to pursue a full time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX’.
Even yesterday, at the 2021 Code Conference, Musk had words for Bezos, telling him: “You cannot sue your way to the Moon, no matter how good your lawyers are.”
He’s right, you know.
However, he hasn’t just had bad things to say. In fact, he said that he admired the recent flights by Richard Branson and Bezos to suborbital space.
He said that he ‘thought it was cool that they’re spending money on the advancement of space’ but hastened to add that ‘suborbital is [just] a step in the direction of orbit’.
We can only assume this won’t be the last we’ll hear of this.
