Bloomberg Named World's Richest Man, Elon Musk Wants To Send Statue And Medal Number Two To Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are two of the richest people in the world competing with each other. (photo: scmp)

JAKARTA - Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is now worth more than $210 billion and has surpassed Jeff Bezos to become the world's richest man, said he would send Amazon founder a silver medal and a "giant statue" number 2.

"I sent a giant figurine with the number '2' to Jeffrey B., along with a silver medal," Musk wrote in an email to Forbes.

Somehow, this wasn't convincing … pic.twitter.com/qAn8Y6i5Ys

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2021

Musk and Bezos have swapped places as the world's richest people for months as their billions on paper fortune changes rapidly with the price of their respective companies' shares.

Musk's current fortune at the end of Tuesday's stock price stood at $213 billion, surpassing Bezos' $197 billion, according to the Bloomberg billionaires index.

Musk has added more than $43 billion to his net worth since January 1, according to the index. Meanwhile, Bezos has added less than $7 billion this year.

In addition to dueling for the title of richest man in the world, Musk and Bezos also clash over their space ambitions.

This summer, Bezos flew into suborbital space on a widely watched ten-minute launch with his company Blue Origin.

Musk has criticized Blue Origin – and other rival Virgin Galactic – for investing so much in a suborbital launch, which he says is nothing compared to the challenge of getting to orbit.

While Musk himself has not yet traveled to space. But SpaceX recently launched four civilian astronauts into space for a three-day trip and managed to return them to Earth, the first mission of its kind.

Behind the scenes, the two companies have been in a years-long contest for US government contracts.

In April, NASA awarded a $2.9 billion contract to SpaceX, skipping an offer from Blue Origin.

Last month, Bezos' company sued the space agency, alleging that it unfairly awarded the contract to Musk's company.

Musk responded by saying that Bezos' Blue Origin should spend more time designing and building rockets and less time suing SpaceX.

"If lobbying [and] lawyers could get [you] into orbit, Bezos would be on Pluto [now]," Musk wrote in a Twitter reply.

Blue Origin, meanwhile, has released infographics in recent weeks calling SpaceX's Starship rocket dangerous and suggesting that it is a "launch vehicle that has never flown into orbit and is still being designed."

Separately, Bezos' Amazon has filed a complaint against SpaceX with the Federal Communications Commission, urging regulators to reject the company's plans to launch more satellites as part of its satellite internet business.

In return, Musk publicly mocked Bezos, who stepped down from his position as Amazon CEO this summer.

"Turns out Besos [sic] retired to pursue a full-time job filing a lawsuit against SpaceX..." Musk wrote on Twitter in August - misspelling Bezos' name, instead writing the Spanish word for "kiss."

For Bezos' part, he has ridiculed plans to colonize Mars, as SpaceX's primary ambition.

"My friends who want to move to Mars, I say, do me a favor and go live on top of Mount Everest for the first year, and see if you like it, because it's a paradise garden compared to Mars," Bezos said.