Elon Musk vs Jeff Bezos – why the 2 tech titans have been feuding for 15 years (and who started it, anyway?)
Tesla founder Musk wants to colonise Mars with SpaceX, while Star Trek-loving Amazon founder Bezos is targeting the stars with Blue Origin – but this billionaire beef goes back way before either had launched a rocket
Over the last 15 years, two of the world’s most high-profile CEOs, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, have been engaged in a simmering rivalry.
The two execs have sparred over their respective space ambitions – Musk runs SpaceX, while Bezos owns Blue Origin – but it hasn’t stopped there. Musk has called out Bezos for running what he deemed a monopoly and has called Bezos a copycat for his self-driving car interests.
Musk and Bezos are two of the most powerful CEOs in the world. Bezos is currently the wealthiest living person and runs Amazon’s sprawling empire while also involving himself in Blue Origin’s quest to send people to the moon. Musk is a dual CEO, manning the ship at both Tesla and SpaceX. Over the years, their not-so-subtle rivalry has even given way to Twitter spats and name-calling.
Here’s how the rivalry began and everything that’s happened since.
Back in the early 2000s, Jeff Bezos wasn’t yet the titan he is today
Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 and the company went public in 1997. But Amazon wasn’t yet the powerhouse it would become – it was years before the company would launch Prime, start its own streaming service, or create its cloud infrastructure service, Amazon Web Services.
But Bezos had always been interested in space. He told The Miami Herald in 1982, after he graduated high school as valedictorian, that he wanted to create outer space colonies for millions of people.
As a result of that long-held interest in leaving Earth, Bezos launched Blue Origin in 2000, a new start-up focused on human space flight.
