- Elon Musk fired Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal on his first day of owning the company.
- Musk is known for his fiery temper and cutthroat tweets and has clashed with many of tech’s biggest players.
- He’s targeted people including Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates.
Parag Agrawal
Musk and Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal met for a meal in March.
“Great dinner :),” Musk said in a text message after.
“Memorable for multiple reasons,” Agrawal texted back. “Really enjoyed it.”
Mark Zuckerberg
Musk has bashed Facebook for years, telling his followers to delete Mark Zuckerberg’s social media site and even suggesting it was partly to blame for the US Capitol insurrection.
One of Musk and Zuckerberg’s first known clashes was in September 2016, when a SpaceX rocket that was meant to take a Facebook satellite into space exploded during testing at a launch site in Florida. This destroyed the satellite, set to be Facebook’s first to go into orbit.
Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook at the time that he was “deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite that would have provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else” across Africa.
Jeff Bezos
Musk and Jeff Bezos, who both run rocket companies, have been rivals for years – and more recently Musk has booted the Amazon founder off top spot as the world’s richest person.
Five years after launching Amazon, Bezos created Blue Origin in 2000.
But Musk was hot on his heels, launching SpaceX in 2002.
Over the years, the two have clashed over lawsuits, patents, and rocket launches.
In 2013, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance filed a formal protest after SpaceX tried to get exclusive use of a NASA launchpad.
Bill Gates
Bill Gates and Musk have argued over electric cars, the coronavirus, and climate change.
Musk was a vocal opponent of lockdown measures throughout the pandemic, even filing a lawsuit against Alameda County, California, for making Tesla temporarily stop manufacturing at its Fremont factory.
He also expressed his hesitancy to get vaccinated, promoted the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment, and suggested that data on coronavirus deaths was distorted.
Gates, in contrast, pivoted his focus during the pandemic to pump money into coronavirus research and try curb the spread of misinformation.
