Is Elon Musk About to Create the Next Amazon? Don’t Rule It Out!
One emoji from Elon Musk has Amazon investors paying close attention, and SpaceX's war chest suggests the joke may not be a joke at all.
Elon Musk has raised the idea of competing with the world’s largest online retailer. A user said that Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) was blocking Grok bots from placing orders. The SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) CEO then posted on X: “Maybe we should start a competitor to Amazon 🤔” The remark may be hyperbole. Still, Musk has a history of starting a venture to get around an existing problem, and SpaceX now has the AI, cash and connectivity to take the idea further.
Why One Emoji Matters to Amazon
The complaint came from verified X user @thecsguy. He wrote that “amazon is blocking grok @bots from ordering” and that one of his Grok bots “only handles my amazon returns.” Amazon reportedly did something similar to Meta Platforms‘ (NASDAQ:META) Muse. Amazon also runs its own shopping agent. Andy Jassy, Amazon’s CEO, said “over 350 million customers have used” Alexa for Shopping in the past 12 months. He added that U.S. users spend “an average of over 40% more per order” than customers who don’t use it.
SpaceX Has Both the AI Business and the Cash
Q2 2026 was SpaceX’s first quarter as a public company. Revenue came in at $7.81 billion, beating the $6.82 billion consensus, and total revenue grew 92% year over year. AI segment revenue rose 247% to $2.56 billion. Capital spending reached $18.37 billion, with $15.83 billion going to AI compute. The company also has a pending $60 billion acquisition of Cursor.
SpaceX said its $100 billion cash position and $47.5 billion backlog provide “substantial capacity to invest in Starship, Starlink satellites, and AI infrastructure while maintaining a disciplined long-term capital allocation framework.” The company is still unprofitable: it posted a net loss of $541 million and EPS of -$0.09, which beat the -$0.29 estimate.
Amazon Is Already Moving Onto Musk’s Turf
The competition already goes both ways. In February, Jassy pointed to “seminal opportunities like AI, chips, robotics, and low earth orbit satellites” when he guided to roughly $200 billion in 2026 capital spending. Amazon Leo had close to 400 satellites in orbit. Starlink, by comparison, doubled its subscriber count to 12.0 million.
Amazon reported Q2 revenue of $200.61 billion, and AWS revenue grew 37% to $42.23 billion. Jassy called it AWS’s “fastest growth in 18 quarters” and said its AI and chips businesses “each eclipsed run rates of more than $25 billion.” The expansion feeding those run rates reaches well beyond the hyperscalers themselves, which is why we featured seven suppliers powering the AI data-center boom in a free report here.
What to Keep an Eye On
SpaceX shares are trading at $149.05 today. That is down 6.3% so far but up 0.29% over the past week, as Barron’s flagged Starlink risks in Ukraine. Amazon stood at $251.73, up 9.06% year to date. Three things are worth tracking: whether Amazon broadens its limits on outside AI shopping agents, how the Cursor deal advances, and whether Musk’s post leads to an actual commerce product.
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After two decades of patrolling the dark corners of suburbia as a police officer, Rich Duprey hung up his badge and gun to begin writing full time about stocks and investing. For the past 20 years, he’s been cruising the markets looking for companies to lock up as long-term holdings in a portfolio while writing extensively on the broad sectors of consumer goods, technology, and industrials. Because his experience isn’t from the typical financial analyst track, Rich is able to break down complex topics into understandable and useful action points for the average investor. His writings have appeared on The Motley Fool, InvestorPlace, Yahoo! Finance, Money Morning, and, of course, 24/7 Wall St. He has been featured in both U.S. and international publications, including MarketWatch, Financial Times, Forbes, Fast Company, and USA Today.
