John Locher/AP; Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images
Elon Musk has taken aim at Jeff Bezos once more, reigniting the war of words between the world's two richest people.
In a X post on Thursday, Musk said that Bezos had told people to dump their shares in his companies because Donald Trump was bound to lose the presidential election.
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 was not reelected.
Musk has been spending time since the election 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.
Mush said on X on Wednesday he's had little input on President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet picks.
If Musk's X post about Bezos is accurate, it's likely that Amazon's 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.
Business Insider was unable to confirm the veracity of Musk's post.
Amazon, Tesla and representatives for Trump didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
Musk and Bezos are worth a combined $557 billion, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. They hold leadership roles at Tesla and Amazon, two of the most powerful companies that are both valued at about $1 trillion.
Musk and Bezos are rivals in areas such as artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, and self-driving cars, and both run space companies that compete for government contracts.
They include Big Tech regulations, competition rules, aerospace contracts, tariffs and other trade policies, and intellectual-property laws.
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!"
Thomas Roulet, 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 his 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 shorting Tesla stock, questioning why Gates would bet against a clean-energy company while ringing the alarm on climate change.
