As they continue to grapple over the title of the world's richest man, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have seemingly spurred their ongoing feud in a different way entirely - by getting in an ugly public spat over their competing satellite porjects.
This is admittedly a dispute nobody would ever want to be involved in...
Or maybe they would if billions of dollars were involved?
Anyway, headlines were made earlier this month when the Tesla and Space X CEO surpassed the Amazon founder as the world's richest man.
Last year alone, Musk's fortune grew by $100.3 billion.
Getty
Experts say it was a result of Tesla's share price rising, which he owns a twenty percent stake of.Musk struggled to match Bezo's wealth for years...
Getty
Who had consistently dominated the billionaire's leaderboard.
Well, until this year, that is...
Getty
The start of this month saw a jump of 4.9 percent for the stock price of Tesla - an increase that came just days after finishing the first trading session of the year where they saw an increase of 3.4 percent.
Musk's net worth subsequently soared to a staggering $188 billion, as per Bloomberg's Billionaires Index.
And with Jeff Bezos net worth standing at $187 billion, Elon Musk was placed as the worlds richest man.
In response to the news, he simply tweeted this:
How strange
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2021
Musk then followed up with this:
Well, back to work …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2021
Did we expect anything else?
However, the good news was short lived.
These things don't last forever... Or, in this instance, longer than a week.
Just 4 days after becoming the world's richest man, Musk fell short once again.
Thus dropping back into second place.
January 11th saw shares of Tesla fall by almost 8 percent.
Creating the companies largest one day dip since September last year.
The drop in shares pushed Musk's net worth down by $13.5 billion, to $176.2 billion Forbes reported...
Meaning that he was running behind Bezos once again.
Though, even Bezos experienced a drop in his net worth that week.
Getty
Bezos' net worth was lowered by $3.6 billion following a more than a 2 percent drop in shares of Amazon.
Still, the Amazon CEO is the clear winner of the title.
But that doesn't mean there aren't other things the insanely wealthy pair can battle over.
This week, it seems that their focuses are now set upon their rival satellite internet projects...
But, apparently, one party is playing dirtier than the other.
SpaceX has accused Amazon of trying to "hamstring" the competition...
On Tuesday, the CEOs became embroiled in an ugly public spat over the SpaceX Starlink and the Project Kuiper being evaluated by federal regulators.
Musk took aim at Bezos on Twitter (where else?) when responding to quotes from SpaceX director David Goldman.
It does not serve the public to hamstring Starlink today for an Amazon satellite system that is at best several years away from operation
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 26, 2021
"It does not serve the public to hamstring Starlink today for an Amazon satellite system that is at best several years away from operation," he said.
An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC:
"The facts are simple. We designed the Kuiper System to avoid interference with Starlink, and now SpaceX wants to change the design of its system... Those changes not only create a more dangerous environment for collisions in space, but they also increase radio interference for customers. Despite what SpaceX posts on Twitter, it is SpaceX's proposed changes that would hamstring competition among satellite systems."
"It is clearly in SpaceX's interest to smother competition in the cradle if they can, but it is certainly not in the public's interest."
Ouch.
The feud continues...