Amazon’s Jeff Bezos shares old article predicting Amazon's failure, gets a reply from Elon Musk

New Delhi: In 1999, Barron's magazine ran a cover storey headlined "Amazon.bomb," predicting that Amazon's stock price would plummet and that the true winners of the Internet boom would be "firms that sell their own products directly."

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was described as "simply another intermediary" in the narrative. However, the magazine's prediction did not come true, since Amazon now has a market capitalisation of $1.6 trillion and Jeff Bezos is one of the world's wealthiest individuals.

Bezos sent an image of the magazine's cover to his Twitter account, along with an inspirational message. "Listen and be open, but don't let anybody tell you who you are," wrote Bezos. He went on to say that this is simply one of many stories that anticipated Amazon's troubles.

"Today, Amazon is one of the world's most successful companies and has revolutionised two entirely different industries," wrote Bezos. 

Bezos' post went viral almost instantly, garnering over 26K likes. While many people commended Bezos for his motivational speech, the focus was on his long-time business competitor, Elon Musk.

Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, replied with a silver medal emoji to the tweet. 

Musk joked last month that he would give Amazon founder Jeff Bezos a "huge statue of the digit '2' together with a silver medal" after surpassing him as the world's richest person.

Last year, Bezos' net worth surpassed $200 billion, thanks to a spike in Amazon stock. Tesla shares have been rising since the pandemic began, according to Forbes, as Musk's net worth has soared.

With SpaceX and Bezos' Blue Origin vying against one other in space exploration, Musk and Bezos have become adversaries. Musk has been slamming Amazon on Twitter several times. After Amazon objected Starlink's expansion, the Tesla CEO reportedly stated that Bezos had "retired to seek a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX."

After Bezos and LVMH Mot Hennessy CEO Bernard Arnault, Musk has become the third individual to reach the $200 billion mark.