If you had 'almost' all the money in the world, what would you do with your time?
Elon Musk has made a name for himself as the world's richest man, but away from being the first person to be worth over $500 billion, he's also remembered for being chronically online and his many feuds.
Public spats after seemingly ignoring ex-wife Grimes, spectacularly claiming that President Donald Trump is named in the Epstein files, and being called a 'national enemy' to the UK have defined Mr. Musk's 2025, with his short foray into politics as part of the Department of Government Efficiency costing him billions.
Still, Elon Musk has clawed back his wealth and is still well on the way to being worth a trillion dollars.
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Keeping with the tech world, Musk is known for having beef with fellow billionaires, including Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman, although it looks like he's just reopened an old one with Bill Gates.
Remembered as the world's richest man from 1995 to 2010 and 2013 to 2017, Gates also has the honor of being the world's first-ever centibillionaire. While Gates has vowed to give away almost all of his money as part of The Giving Pledge, he's criticized Musk for going against the modus operandi of the organization.
Musk signed The Giving Pledge back in 2012 and is thought to have donated around $8 billion, but that hasn't stopped Gates from accusing him of "killing the world's poorest children" due to his cuts to USAID while heading up the DOGE.
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Responding to one post claiming that people shouldn't believe the stories about USAID cuts leading to actual deaths, Musk directly called out Gates and wrote: "It is completely false. Bill Gates is pushing this lie, despite having over $80 billion dollars in his NGO that he could easily spend to save these alleged lives that are being lost.
"Why doesn’t he? Bill Gates is a liar. Always has been."
Gates has been vocally against the decision to gut USAID, sharing a study from The Lancet that claimed cuts would lead to an additional eight million child deaths before age five by 2040, adding that there would be 15.2 million excess AIDS deaths and another 2.2 million extra tuberculosis deaths between now and 2040.
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The Microsoft co-founder also urged more global health investment, maintaining that lifesaving vaccines can cost as little as 30 cents while saying: "With a relatively small amount of money, you can do a great deal of good for a great many people."
Branding Gates a 'liar' is a further twist of the knife, coming shortly after Musk took aim at the fellow billionaire's long-held short on the failure of Tesla stock. In November 2025, an enraged Musk slammed Gates and said: "Sorry, I cannot take your philanthropy on climate change seriously when you have a massive short position against Tesla, the company doing the most to solve climate change."
He previously mocked Gates' physical appearance, although the latter is once reported to have said: "He’s super mean to so many people, so you can’t take it too personally."
In the game of the billionaire barbs, it looks like it's over to Gates.