Elon Musk calls Jeff Bezos a ‘copycat’ over acquisition of self-driving firm Zoox

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has called Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos a copycat after the ecommerce giant announced to purchase self-driving car company Zoox pegged at over $1 billion.

“@JeffBezos is a copy[cat] haha,” Musk tweeted late Friday with a link to an article about Bezos’ Zoox purchase.

On Thursday, news reports surfaced that Amazon is set to spend over $1 billion to acquire self-driving car startup Zoox.

Like Tesla, California-headquartered Zoox “is applying the latest in automotive, robotics and renewable energy to design a symmetrical, bidirectional, zero-emissions vehicle from the ground up to solve the unique challenges of autonomous mobility”, IANS said.

Zoox settled a lawsuit with Tesla in April after admitting that some new employees it hired from Tesla possessed documents when they joined Zoox. Tesla had filed a lawsuit in March last year against four former employees and Zoox.

Amazon has stepped up its investment in the car sector, participating in a $530 million funding round early last year in self-driving car startup Aurora Innovation Inc, a Reuters report had said previously.

A majority of Zoox investors are getting their money back, with some making a positive return, the report added. Lux Capital, DFJ and Atlassian co-founder Michael Cannon-Brooks are some of the investors, Reuters added.