The world’s wealthiest man Elon Musk took to social media Thursday to share he and the planet’s next richest person, Jeff Bezos, apparently made amends as the billionaires often at odds both oversee rocket launches at their respective private aerospace companies this week, a month after the pair dined together at Mar-a-Lago.
Jeff Bezos walks near Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket in 2021.
Musk began the interaction with an early morning post to his X social media platform congratulating Bezos on his company Blue Origin’s successful launch which sent Bezos’ company’s New Glenn rocket into orbit.
After the Amazon founder Bezos wished Musk luck Thursday afternoon on his firm SpaceX’s Starship rocket launch scheduled later Thursday, Musk started his meme-filled lovefest.
Musk shared a pair of clips from the 2008 comedy film “Step Brothers,” which stars Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly as middle-aged men who initially butt heads after being forced to live together following their parents’ marriage, before bonding.
Musk shared a scene from the movie in which Ferrell’s character asks Reilly’s: “Did we just become best friends?,” which Musk commented was the “perfect meme” for him and Bezos’ relationship.
Musk also reposted a clip from the film’s famous “Catalina Wine Mixer” climax scene in which the actors perform a musical number, which Musk quipped was “actual footage” of him and Bezos, and a photo of him and Bezos together in 2004, when Amazon was worth less than $20 billion and before Tesla went public.
Musk’s $426 billion net worth is about $190 billion more than Bezos’ $235 billion, according to our latest estimates. Close to 90% of Bezos’ fortune stems from his roughly 10% stake in Amazon, while Musk’s net worth comes from his leading stakes in SpaceX, the generative artificial intelligence startup xAI and the automaker Tesla, his best-known company.
Musk’s bromance with Bezos comes less than two months after he went after Bezos for allegedly “telling everyone” President-elect Donald Trump would lose the 2024 election and to “sell all their Tesla and SpaceX stock” as a consequence, claims Bezos denied as “100%” false. The often good-natured beef between the centibillionaires extends back years, as Musk joked to Forbes in 2021 he planned to mail Bezos a silver medal after surpassing the Amazon chairman as world’s richest person. Bezos, Musk and Trump met at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort last month. Bezos, Musk and the world’s third-richest person, Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg, will all reportedly sit together at Trump’s inauguration Monday.
Bezos is not the first billionaire to earn Musk’s best friend moniker. In a November X post, Musk wrote he was “happy to be first buddy” of Trump.