• On his first day as owner of the company, Elon Musk sacked Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal.
  • Musk has tangled with many of the greatest names in IT and is renowned for his ferocious temper and truthful tweets.
  • Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos are among the individuals he has targeted.

Parag Agarwal




In March, Musk and Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal had dinner together.

Musk followed up with a text message that read, "Great dinner:).

Agrawal texted back, "Memorable for many reasons." I really liked it.

Agrawal and several other top executives were fired by Musk eight months after he acquired control of Twitter.

It had not been long before their relationship soured.

After becoming Twitter's largest shareholder, Musk was slated to join the company's board of directors in the spring.

But on April 9, he questioned, "Is Twitter dying?," tweeting that some of Twitter's most popular accounts "tweet rarely and post very little information."

It's understandable that Agrawal didn't like the message, and he told Musk that "in the current context, it's not helping me make Twitter better."

Musk asked immediately after, "What did you do this week?" "This is a waste of time; I'm not joining the board. I'll put out a proposal to make Twitter private.."

Twitter was "simply not a good investment" without the improvements Musk demanded, he said. Musk then proposed paying $54 to acquire Twitter .20 per share, stating that if the deal didn't go through, "given that I don't have confidence in management nor do I believe I can drive the necessary change in the public market, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder."

On April 25, Twitter approved of the agreement.

Just a few weeks later, however, Musk showed signs of hesitancy about the agreement, tweeting that he'd placed it "on pause" until Twitter provided him with more information regarding the number of bots using the platform.

Musk responded with a poop emoji when Agrawal wrote a thread on Twitter arguing that Musk's idea to count the amount of bots on the platform was incorrect.

Musk terminated the agreement with Twitter in a letter in July, alleging that the social media behemoth had omitted or misrepresented information about the amount of bot accounts using its service.

After Musk cancelled the agreement, Twitter sued him to make him finish it, claiming that he had "refused to honour his duties."

Later in July, Musk filed a countersuit, claiming that the business had purposely undercounted the number of spam accounts as part of "its plot to deceive investors about the company's prospects."

Musk tried for months to back out of the agreement, but on October 4 his attorneys wrote Twitter a letter reiterating the initial offer.

Musk and Twitter were close to reaching an agreement on a deal that would have given the tech tycoon an 8% discount, but the negotiations broke down after disagreements between the two parties. According to Musk's attorney, Twitter's executives and board wanted "all kinds of things" in the renegotiated deal that the billionaire refused to accept.

Just hours before Musk's deadline set by the judge, on the evening of October 27, the agreement was finalised.

The IT tycoon's initial action was to fire Agrawal. The same evening, Musk also ousted CFO Ned Segal, chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, and general counsel Sean Edgett, sources told Insider.


Mark Zuckerberg



For years, Musk has criticised Facebook, urging his followers to uninstall Mark Zuckerberg's social media platform and even implying that it was partially to blame for the uprising in the US Capitol.

In September 2016, a SpaceX rocket intended to put a Facebook satellite into orbit exploded during testing at a launch facility in Florida, sparking one of Musk and Zuckerberg's earliest recorded disagreements. This destroyed Facebook's first satellite that was supposed to enter orbit.

When the SpaceX launch failed, Zuckerberg posted on Facebook that he was "very disappointed to hear that our satellite that would have enabled connection to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else" in Africa had been destroyed.

The issue, he continued, "isn't the money; it's that now it might take longer to link people."

Musk claimed it was "my fault for being an idiot" two years later and claimed SpaceX provided Facebook a free launch as restitution.

Musk expressed concerns about the subject in 2017, and Zuckerberg, a fervent supporter of AI, stated that he had "quite strong ideas" on the matter. He described doomsday prophesiers as "very nasty, and in some ways, I honestly believe it's pretty reckless," adding that they try to "pump up these doomsday scenarios."

Zuckerberg's knowledge of AI, according to Musk's response on Twitter, is "limited."

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica controversy, Musk removed the Tesla and SpaceX Facebook profiles in 2018.

Musk tweeted, "I didn't do this because someone dared me to do it. It's not a political statement. Simply dislike Facebook because it makes me queasy.

In addition, Musk has urged his own supporters to cancel their Facebook accounts, calling the social media site "lame" and "sucks."

Musk criticised Facebook in possibly his most scathing statement to date on January 6, 2021.

Musk posted a meme connecting the rioting to Facebook as a throng of President Donald Trump's supporters stormed the US Capitol.

Musk has shunned Facebook in favour of the competing social networking platform Twitter, where he has amassed more than 111 million followers, making him one of the site's most popular users.

Now that he has acquired the platform, he will finally face off against Zuckerberg.


Jeff Bezos


For years, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who both own rocket firms, have been at odds. More recently, Musk has ousted Bezos from the title of richest person in the world.

In 2000, five years after starting Amazon, Bezos founded Blue Origin.

Musk, though, launched SpaceX in 2002, following closely behind him.

The two have fought over legal proceedings, patents, and rocket launches throughout the years.

In 2013, after SpaceX attempted to obtain exclusive use of a NASA launchpad, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance officially objected.

NASA ultimately decided to support SpaceX because Blue Origin "had not yet succeeded in building a reliable suborbital vehicle, despite investing over 10 years in development," according to Musk, who branded the measure a "phoney blocking strategy."


The next year, a patent was granted for the drone ships that Blue Origin utilised to land rocket boosters. SpaceX submitted a petition to invalidate the patent in order to avoid paying for the privilege of using the technology. After a judge ruled with SpaceX, Blue Origin gave up most of the patent's claims.

Bezos referred to a reusable rocket landing in a 2015 video he posted to Twitter as "the rarest of bears," to which Musk scornfully retorted that a SpaceX rocket had completed six suborbital flights three years earlier and was "still around."

As an example, when Amazon revealed plans to launch more than 3,000 internet satellites and when it bought the self-driving car startup Zoox, Musk had mocked Bezos for supposedly stealing some of his ideas. Tesla, Musk's electric vehicle manufacturer, is also developing self-driving technology, though its cars do not yet have complete autonomy.

For his part, Bezos has made light of Musk's plans to colonise Mars. In an early 2019 speech, he advised those who wanted to live on Mars to "go live on the summit of Mount Everest for a year first and see whether you like it, since it's a garden paradise compared to Mars."

Despite the fact that Bezos and Musk are only seven years apart in age, Musk appeared to insinuate that Bezos was too old to advance space travel in an interview with The New York Times in 2020.

"The rate of progress is too slow and the amount of years he has left is not enough," Musk stated in reference to Blue Origin, but "I'm still delighted he's doing what he's doing with Blue Origin."

NASA awarded SpaceX the sole $2.9 billion contract in April 2021 to build the lunar landers that will enable humans to visit the moon again after more than 50 years. Blue Origin objected to the ruling in a 50-page protest, calling it "flawed," and then sued NASA, but in the end the court decided against Blue Origin.

Bezos left his position as CEO of Amazon in July 2021 "to pursue a full-time career filing lawsuits against SpaceX," joked Musk later on Twitter.

Bezos and Musk have been squabbling over who is the richest person in the world since the year 2021 began. Since late 2017, Bezos had held the position, but Musk first passed him in January 2021. The two have alternated positions a few times, but according to Bloomberg estimates, Musk is now solidly in the lead with a wealth of almost $195 billion.

Bezos is in fourth place with about $112 billion, after Gautam Adani of the Adani Group and Bernard Arnault of LVMH.

Bill Gates



Over the coronavirus, climate change, and electric vehicles, Bill Gates and Elon Musk have clashed.

Throughout the pandemic, Musk was a vociferous opponent of lockdown measures. He even filed a lawsuit against the Californian county of Alameda for forcing Tesla to temporarily halt production at its Fremont factory.

Additionally, he voiced his reluctance to have a vaccination, advocated for the use of the malaria medicine hydroxychloroquine, and claimed that statistics on coronavirus mortality were inaccurate.

Contrarily, during the pandemic, Gates shifted his priorities to fund coronavirus research and work to stop the spread of false information.

Gates stated to CNBC in July 2020 that "Elon's positioning is to sustain a high level of inappropriate comments." "He doesn't do much with immunizations. I hope he doesn't get too mixed up with things he's not concerned in."

Musk joked shortly after, tweeting, "The allegation that Bill Gates and I are lovers is absolutely wrong." He referred to Gates as a "knucklehead" in an interview with The New York Times.

In February 2020, Gates revealed to a YouTuber that he had just purchased a Porsche Taycan, his first all-electric vehicle. In a Twitter response to the interview, Musk said that his conversations with Gates had been "underwhelming." Later that year, after Gates questioned whether it was feasible to convert trucks to totally electric vehicles, Musk tweeted that Gates had "no clue" about electric trucks.

Additionally, Gates doesn't seem to fully endorse the space missions that tech billionaires like Musk and Bezos are investing billions on.

"I'm not a fan of Mars. Rockets are not the answer, in my opinion. However, perhaps I'm overlooking something "said he. Because "my foundation can buy measles vaccines and save a life for $1,000," he continued, "my foundation will not pay for a ticket on a space flight."

Gates also cautioned people against falling for Musk's pitch for Bitcoin, urging those who "have less money than Elon" to exercise caution while making an investment.

A tweet that Musk later removed appeared to make fun of Bill Gates' stature in a debate about Gates' suspected shorting of Tesla stock.

Gates stated to The BBC in May that "there's no need for him to be polite to me."

Gates has lauded Musk as well, though.

Gates stated that what Musk has accomplished with Tesla is "one of the greatest contributions to climate change anyone's ever made" in a podcast conversation with Kara Swisher of The New York Times in 2021.

It's not a smart idea to underestimate Elon, he remarked.

He added: "I like him. I think he does wonderful job. I don't know him very well." to YouTuber Hugo Décrypte.

Eller said, "But I don't think Bill enjoys it all that much."

Tim Cook



A book claims that when Musk requested to lead Apple, Tim Cook cursed at him.

According to Tim Higgins' 2021 book "Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century," Musk and Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke over the phone about Apple possibly acquiring Tesla in around 2016.

Citing sources acquainted with Musk's account of the events, Higgins said that Musk would only accept the agreement if Cook gave him the position of CEO of Apple.

Cook answered, "Fuck you," according to the book, and hung up.

Higgins continued, "It's hard to assume Musk was serious about wanting to be CEO of Apple," saying that it was difficult to verify the veracity of Musk's claims on the phone call.

Musk has refuted the allegations in the book.

"Cook and I have never communicated verbally or in writing. At one point, I asked to speak with Cook regarding Apple's potential acquisition of Tesla "Musk responded to the report through Twitter.

"There were absolutely no planned purchase conditions. He objected to meeting."