On Monday, Elon Musk became the third person ever to amass a fortune worth $200 billion, according to Forbes, surpassing Amazon founder and rival space billionaire Jeff Bezos in the process. Reached for comment by Forbes, Musk took a celebratory crack at Bezos.
“I’m sending a giant statue of the digit ‘2’ to Jeffrey B., along with a silver medal,” Musk wrote in a short email.
The jibe is no surprise coming from the eccentric Tesla chief executive officer, who has in the past taken to Twitter to playfully label Bezos a “copycat” twice (both times using a cat emoji), first in April 2019, when Amazon announced plans to launch internet-beaming satellites in competition with Musk’s SpaceX and again in June 2020, when Amazon acquired self-driving car company Zoox, which is taking on Tesla.
In recent years, the two men have been on a collision course on two tracks: their net worths and their space ambitions. Musk was worth $24.6 billion in March 2020, nearly $90 billion less than Bezos at the time. In August 2020, Bezos became the first-ever person to be worth $200 billion as Amazon stock soared. But a remarkable rally in shares of Musk’s electric vehicle company Tesla—up 720% in 2020—helped Musk catch up, and he briefly became the world’s richest person in January 2021. The pair have traded the title back and forth several times this year, as has Bernard Arnault, chief of French luxury goods conglomerate LVMH, in an unprecedented year of jockeying atop the billionaire rankings. As of 2 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Musk is in first place, worth an estimated $200.7 billion. Bezos is number two richest, at an estimated $192.5 billion. Arnault follows in the number three spot, worth $174 billion, according to Forbes’ estimates.
A spokesperson for Bezos did not reply to a request for comment.
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