Elon Musk weighs in on whether he would abuse his growing political influence

Elon Musk has weighed in on comments from his rivals downplaying the idea that he would abuse his growing political power.

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon (AMZN+2.95%) founder Jeff Bezos, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, and other tech and business leaders who have crossed Musk in the past are worried about his influential relationship with Donald Trump. Publicly, both Bezos and Altman have downplayed their fears.

Bezos said this week at the annual New York Times DealBook Summit that he’s “optimistic this time around” about Donald Trump’s second presidential administration, which Musk has had a key role in laying the ground for. Bezos, who is now focused on his aerospace company Blue Origin, called Musk’s SpaceX “very good competitors,” adding that he doubts Musk would use his influence unjustly.

“I take it face value, what has been said, which is that he’s not going to use his political power to advantage his own companies or to disadvantage his competitors,” Bezos said, adding that he “could be wrong about that, but I think it could be true.”

Altman, also speaking at DealBook, said that he believes “pretty strongly that Elon will do the right thing,” adding that it would be “profoundly un-American to use political power” to hurt competitors. His comments come even as Altman has reportedly reached out to his connections in Trump’s circle, including Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, who Trump tapped to lead the Commerce Department.

“They are right,” Musk chimed in Friday on his social media platform, X.

Both Bezos and Altman would have good reason to fear a vengeful Musk with political power.

Bezos and Musk have had a few public spats in recent years. Blue Origin has protested a contract NASA gave SpaceX and sought to limit SpaceX’s Starship launches, while Amazon’s Kuiper has opposed SpaceX’s plans to expand its Starlink satellite network. In 2020, Musk called for the government to break up Amazon, complaining about monopolies.

As for Altman, Musk was an OpenAi co-founder in 2015 before he left over a conflict of interest in 2018. A few years later, he launched his own artificial intelligence startup, xAI, which just secured another $6 billion in funding, according to a regulatory filing. Musk has sued OpenAI and has asked a federal court to stop it from becoming a for-profit business and to prevent it from allegedly requiring investors to refrain from funding rivals, including xAI.

—Britney Nguyen contributed to this article.