In early June, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was preparing to marry Lauren Sanchez when Ilon Musk began publishing a series of critical posts about the "Big Beautiful" bill that US President Donald Trump was actively promoting. It got to the point where Musk mentioned Trump's name in connection with the "Jeffrey Epstein list" and the president threatened to deprive the main sponsor of his election campaign of government contracts. Apparently, despite the pre-wedding rush, Jeff Bezos decided not to miss the moment and try to get Musk's space government contracts. Does he have a chance to do so?

Oligarch's share

On the stage are the same, the venue is the social networks of the main characters. 

On July 1, the President of the United States again promises to take away government support from Elon Musk. In Truth Social, he wrote, "...without subsidies, he'd probably have to close up store and go home to South Africa. No more rocket launches, satellites and electric car manufacturing and our country would save a fortune. Maybe we should ask DOGE to think hard about this. MORE MONEY TO SAVE!!!";  

In addition, Trump threatened that the very Department of Government Efficiency DOGE, which Musk once headed, "could turn into a monster and eat Elon." A few days later, Ilon Musk announced the formation of his party. 

What's really at stake?

As the Washington Post wrote in February 2025, Musk's companies have been big recipients of public money in the form of government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax breaks for more than 20 years. According to the publication's calculations, their total amount is $38 billion, and in fact, probably even more, because secret contracts (for example, for the launch of military satellites) can not be accounted for. And these amounts have been growing steadily. Almost two-thirds of these billions have been promised to Musk's companies over the past five years; in 2024 alone, his companies received a record $6.3 billion in contracts;

In addition, Musk's foundation of wealth, Tesla, has received a total of $11.4 billion in benefits from federal and state programs aimed at boosting the electric vehicle industry. Tesla sold emission allowances to other companies. Without them, Tesla would have lost $700 million in 2020 and instead made an $862 million profit, wrote The Washington Post. That lasted quite a while: in the second quarter of 2023, it was quota sales that became Tesla's main source of revenue, wrote Benzinga. 

The The Independent estimated the potential value of all existing contracts of Musk's businesses even higher - at $89.2 billion. And that's excluding classified data;

Most of the funds SpaceX received are from government contracts with NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense. 

Star Wars

It seems that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, a longtime competitor of Ilon Musk in the space business, has decided to take advantage of the situation;

Their rivalry dates back to 2004, when SpaceX (launched in 2002) and Bezos's Blue Origin, a space company founded in 2000, were just projects, writes Business Insider. 

In 2004, they met for dinner to discuss their plans for reusable rockets. But, apparently, the conversation went the wrong way - Musk, according to his own recollection, tried to give Bezos advice, but the latter took it without enthusiasm, writes Business Insider, citing Christian Davenport's book "Space Barons". 

Since then, the companies have constantly competed and even sued over patents. 

In 2018, Amazon launched its satellite internet program, which is essentially a direct competitor to Musk's Starlink. Amazon's first 27 Kuiper satellites were successfully launched into low-Earth orbit in April 2025, followed by another 27 in late June. For comparison, Starlink has about 11,000 of them now;

And when Bezos acquired robotaxi company Zoox for $1.2 billion in 2020, Musk, who had long promised but had not yet made his own fully autonomous robotaxis, called him a "copycat" on social media.

And so, while Musk's battle with Trump raged on social media, Bezos appears to have begun actively "grooming" the president, The Wall Street Journal has learned;

Bezos spoke with Trump at least twice in June, and Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp traveled to the White House to meet with Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wiles, the newspaper said. In at least some conversations with Trump and his team, Bezos and other Blue Origin executives have called for more government contracts, WSJ sources said.

Bezos even invited Trump to his lavish wedding to Lauren Sanchez, which took place in late June in Venice, but the U.S. president was unable to attend due to scheduling conflicts. But the president's daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner were there.

Jeff Bezos has a complicated relationship with the president, too - during Trump's first term, Amazon sued the government over a $10 billion cloud services contract that went to Microsoft, remindsFinancial Times. AWS (Amazon's cloud division) claimed in the lawsuit that Trump "used his power to 'screw over' Amazon" because of a "widely publicized personal feud" with Bezos and the Washington Post newspaper (which is owned by the billionaire).

Now that Bezos has retraced his path to the White House, "SpaceX and Blue Origin could clash on several important government deals, including space work related to Trump's Golden Dome missile defense effort and Mars exploration projects the White House has proposed to NASA," wrote the WSJ.

Adding to Blue Origin's chances of successfully competing is the generally successful test of its new super-heavy rocket, New Glenn, held in January 2025. 

The rocket successfully placed the cargo into Earth orbit, and although the reentry first stage never managed to land on a barge in the ocean, overall this is a big step forward for the company;

New Glenn is 28 meters higher and 3.3 meters wider than Musk's heaviest rocket, Falcon Heavy, which means it can carry more cargo, lowering the cost per kilogram delivered. 

Launches of SpaceX's huge spaceship called Starship are meanwhile going on with mixed success - only four of nine tests have been deemed successful, with the latest failure occurring in May, the BBC writes. 

But so far, Musk has been winning the battle for government contracts: in an April round of allocating U.S. Space Force money for future launches, SpaceX got 28 launches for $5.9 billion, United Launch Alliance - a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin - got $5.7 billion for 17 missions, and Blue Origin got just seven missions for $2.4 billion, writes the Cosmiclog portal;

But this happened even before the scandal. Who knows, perhaps now the situation will change, but it is unlikely to happen soon;

During his altercation with Trump, Musk, in particular, threatened to decommission his Dragon spacecraft, which remains the only U.S. spacecraft so far to have proven its ability to both deliver and pick up astronauts and cargo from the International Space Station. 

Trump will have to face that fact, unless, of course, he decides to pay budget money to Roscosmos again.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor

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