Cooler giant Yeti took a playful swipe at Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos’ space race with a billboard urging the billionaires to explore earth and ‘save billions’

• Yeti has a billboard in Austin of a star-filled night sky with the line "See Space. Save Billions."
• The company told Insider it was inspired by billionaire space racers like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
• Bezos poured billions of his Amazon stock into Blue Origin, which flew to the edge of space in July.
• See more stories on Insider's business page.

Billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are vying for the lead in space exploration, with both SpaceX and Blue Origin having completed successful missions recently.

But cooler-maker Yeti has a message for its customers and for the billionaire space racers: just go outside.

The Austin, Texas-based company rolled out a new billboard over one of its locations, picturing a mountain scene with a night sky full of stars. In the foreground is a tent and the tagline "See Space. Save Billions."

"With SpaceX and Tesla and everyone trying to get to Mars out of Texas it seems, we love the outdoors, and there's a lot of space out there," Paulie Dery, Yeti's vice president of marketing, told Insider. "There's a big chunk of the world on this planet, and we think it's pretty special and it doesn't cost you billions."

Bezos' space exploration company Blue Origin launched its New Shepherd rocket from the West Texas town of Van Horn on July 20, with Bezos and three others aboard.

The 11-minute endeavor cost more than $2.5 million per minute, as the El Paso Times reported, and Bezos has poured about $7.5 billion into the 21-year-old company to date, Forbes estimates. Reuters reported the company is selling tickets to the public priced between $200,000 and $300,000, and Bezos said after his flight that Blue Origin had already sold $100 million worth of spots for future trips.

And SpaceX followed suit days later but out of Florida. The company has a large presence in the Texas city of Brownsville, and SpaceX said in March that it's building a "state-of-the-art" manufacturing center in Austin.

The Yeti ad is just the latest part of its signature marketing style: Austin or Texas-centric with a playful and tongue-in-cheek tone. Dery said the company, which produces high-end and high-priced coolers, strives to stay respectful with its billboards, which have become a landmark site along South Congress Avenue and near Austin's Town Lake.

Earlier this year, Yeti debuted a billboard poking fun at the many Californians that have been trickling into Texas for years but specifically during the pandemic.

Musk himself was one of the many previously based in the West Coast state to say he moved to Texas. He announced in 2020 that he was moving his companies to the southern state, citing in part his disagreement with state COVID-19 policies.

There's a Tesla factory under construction just outside of Austin, near its airport, and state documents from last year show his Boring Company scooped up an industrial site nearby.