A billionaires feud involving Elon Musk and Indian-American venture capitalist Vinod Khosla just hit the fan. The tech moguls have been embroiled in an on-and-off war of words for years, but this week the matter escalated far out of control when the Khosla Ventures CEO targeted the Tesla boss on social media.

Musk, in turn, has responded to Khosla’s “racism” dig at him in a fiery expletive-laden rant on his SNS platform, X. Alluding to something that they feuded over even in 2024, the SpaceX CEO wrote on X, “Vinod, you’re not just such a pompous a**hole that you tried to stop the public from using a public beach near your house, you’ve also gone full r**ard.”

After hurling a derogatory and ableist slur at the Indian American businessman, Musk added, “My partner, Shivon, is half Indian and my eldest son with her is named in honor of the great Indian physicist Chandrasekhar.”

Shivon Zillis, the Tesla founder’s partner, who shares four children with him, was herself born to an Indian mother and a Canadian father.

What prompted Elon Musk’s rant against Vinod Khosla?

Elon consciously backed his argument against Khosla by dropping a reminder about Shivon Zillis’ Indian ancestry after the venture capitalist called out Musk for preaching about the “WAGA” agenda instead of standing by the “MAGA” ideology.

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Sending a direct message to the richest man’s employees tied to his various businesses, Vinod Khosla had previously tweeted, “@elonmusk doesn’t want MAGA, he wants WAGA or “white America great again” as a racism is great and desirable” paradigm. All non-whites in @tesla, @SpaceX @X etc and all decent whites should quit and join our portfolio. Email us your linkedin!”

His post on X emerged as a response to a months-old tweet by Musk where he wrote he reiterated his concerns about the birth rate dropping worldwide. However, instead of laying out a worldview of the issue, he chose to especially highlight the numbers linked to the “white” population. “White people are a rapidly diminishing minority of global population,” Musk had written on X in September 2025.

Elon Musk vs Vinod Khosla feud explained

Despite their mutually shared old ties to OpenAI dating back to the company’s early stage, Khosla and Musk’s feud particularly intensified in 2024. At the time, the Indian American Silicon Valley billionaire had publicly demanded an apology from Elon after he attacked the Khosla Ventures founder for his connection to a public land battle in California.

The X boss’ latest “you tried to stop the public from using a public beach near your house” swipe at Khosla alludes to the same matter. Back then, Musk posted a seemingly altered image of a sign on a beach that read “No plebs allowed. Property of Vinod Khosla.”

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It pointed to the years-long legal battle Khosla had backed to block the use of his private property to access the public Martins Beach. As per Forbes, the Indian-origin businessman bought a piece of land in 2008, which was previously used as a paid parking lot for Martins Beach south of San Francisco.

Following the purchase, Khosla pressed that he didn’t want the property to be publicly accessible. Once Elon Musk pushed that tweet in September 2024, Khosla responded to Musk, asking for an apology for “spreading falsehoods” on X. The Indian American said that he never put up a sign even resembling the likes of the one Musk had tweeted about. Khosla further argued that Musk caused “a lot of damage with your irresponsible behavior.”

Beyond their clash over the property, the duo has also traded barbs over Donald Trump, US presidential elections, immigration and OpenAI in the past.