- Elon Musk’s ire this year has extended from Mark Zuckerberg to MacKenzie Scott.
- The mercurial billionaire has often fired insults and traded barbs at his contemporaries on X.
- “I have fun sparring with Elon. He likes to troll and so do I,” Mark Cuban told BI.
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Elon Musk runs half a dozen companies, but the work involved in keeping the Muskonomy humming hasn’t stopped him from beefing with his fellow billionaires this year.
His platform of choice for trading barbs, firing insults, and sharing generally unfiltered thoughts is X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, which he bought in late 2022.
“Have I shot myself in the foot multiple times? Yes,” Musk said of his posting habits in an April 2023 interview with BBC’s James Clayton.
“I think I should not tweet after 3:00 a.m. If you’re gonna tweet something that maybe is controversial, save it as a draft, then look at it the next day and see if you still want to tweet it,” he added.
To be sure, Musk’s history of fights stretches way further back than 2024, and not everyone he trades barbs with takes it personally.
“I have fun sparring with Elon. He likes to troll and so do I,” Mark Cuban told BI on Monday. “I have no issues with him.”
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of the billionaires Musk has fought with in 2024.
Representatives for Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment from BI for this story.
OpenAI chief Sam Altman
Sam Altman isn’t your typical Musk rival. Altman cofounded OpenAI with Musk in 2015 and interviewed Musk a year later when he was still the president of Y Combinator.
But differences in thought over how OpenAI should be run have driven a wedge between the men.
In February, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman, accusing the company of violating its nonprofit mission by partnering with Microsoft. Musk withdrew his lawsuit against Altman in June, just a day before a judge was set to consider OpenAI’s request to dismiss it.
“More on this later,” Musk said of the lawsuit’s withdrawal on June 12.
Musk has been a vocal critic of Altman’s leadership of OpenAI after the company found success with its AI chatbot ChatGPT.
“OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it ‘Open’ AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft,” Musk wrote on X in February 2023.
Altman has remained civil when publicly responding to Musk’s barbs.
In March, the OpenAI chief told podcaster Lex Fridman that he found Musk’s lawsuit bewildering and expected Musk to have “more empathy” for OpenAI’s ambitions.
“It wasn’t that long ago Elon was crazily talking about launching rockets when people were laughing at that thought, so I think he’d have more empathy for this,” Altman told Fridman.
Representatives for Altman didn’t respond to a request for comment from BI.
“Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban
Billionaire Mark Cuban is no stranger when it comes to getting caught in Musk’s crosshairs.
Cuban has feuded with Musk on multiple topics, ranging from their differing views on corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion to their opinions on President Joe Biden.
“Mark Cuban is desperately trying to signal his ‘virtue’, but his hypocrisy convinces no one,” Musk said on X in January after Cuban voiced his support for corporate DEI initiatives.
At one point, Musk called Cuban a “racist” in an X post for backing DEI. He later deleted the post.
In March, Musk threw a jibe at Cuban after the “Shark Tank” star said he’d vote for Biden even if the president “was being given last rites.“
“‘If Biden were a flesh-eating zombie with 5 seconds to live where, upon being re-elected, Earth would plunge into a 1000 years of darkness, I would still vote for him.’ — Mark Cuban,” Musk wrote in an X post.
Cuban, however, doesn’t seem too bothered by Musk’s jabs.
“I have fun sparring with Elon. He likes to troll and so do I,” Cuban told BI. “I have no issues with him.”
While I have your attention. Wanted to say thank you!
Your consultants for @tesla followed up today about using @costplusdrugs drugs to save the company money. Truly appreciate it.
(And my limit is 300 years of darkness) https://t.co/MpaJp8Ocde
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) March 5, 2024
Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott
Musk has also gone after the former spouses of billionaires this year.
In March, Musk slammed Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, for her charitable giving.
“‘Super rich ex-wives who hate their former spouse’ should filed be listed among ‘Reasons that Western Civilization died,'” Musk wrote in an X post on March 6. He later deleted the post.
Scott’s philanthropy has been a long-running bugbear for Musk, who claimed in May 2022 that his companies were being sidelined by the Democratic Party partly because Scott had donated to “PACs posing as charities.”
Scott was married to Bezos for 25 years. The pair finalized their divorce in 2019. As part of the settlement terms, Scott received $38 billion worth of Amazon shares.
Scott did not publicly respond to Musk’s post in March, though she did ramp up her donations in the wake of his remarks.
On March 19, Scott announced she would donate $640 million to 361 organizations. That sum was more than double the $250 million she had initially pledged to give away last year.
Representatives for Scott didn’t respond to a request for comment from BI.
Melinda French Gates, the former wife of Microsoft founder Bill Gates
In June, Musk ripped into Melinda French Gates after she gave her first presidential endorsement to Joe Biden.
“Might be the downfall of western civilization,” Musk said in an X post on June 20.
Musk isn’t exactly a fan of French Gates’ ex-husband, Bill Gates, either. The Tesla CEO was furious when he learned that Gates had shorted Tesla’s stock, as detailed in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk.
“How can someone say they are passionate about fighting climate change and then do something that reduced the overall investment in the company doing the most? It’s pure hypocrisy,” Musk told Isaacson.
Shortly after he’d turned down a philanthropic opportunity with Gates, Musk took to X to share a meme that compared the Microsoft founder to the pregnant man emoji.
“In case you need to lose a boner fast,” Musk said on April 22, 2023.
Representatives for Gates and French Gates didn’t respond to requests for comment from BI.
OpenAI investor Vinod Khosla
Unlike most of the billionaires on this list, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla fired salvos at Musk first.
“With @elonmusk, feels like a bit of sour grapes in suing @OpenAI, not getting in early enough, not staying committed and now a rival effort,” Khosla, an OpenAI investor, said on X in March, while referencing Musk’s AI startup xAI.
“Like they say if you can’t innovate, litigate and that’s what we have here. Elon of old would be building with us to hit the same goal,” Khosla added.
“Vinod doesn’t know what he is talking about here,” Musk replied.
But Khosla wasn’t done. Days later, he gave Musk — a frequent poster and reposter of memes — a taste of his own medicine when he posted a meme ridiculing xAI.
Representatives for Khosla didn’t respond to a request for comment from BI.
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