Arguably, neither of the two is a scientist. Their contributions weren't particularly novel from a scientific perspective: most of what they did was commercial

Arguably, neither of the two is a scientist. Their contributions weren't particularly novel from a scientific perspective: most of what they did was commercialize things that had been previously invented - in most cases, several decades ago. Working VR setups first showed up in the 90's (I think). Electric cars were a 100 year old concept, and had many previous attempts. Vertically-landing rockets happened in the late 80's. Almost all of the rest of the Musk companies (small tunnels, "hyperloops," Twitter) have little novelty. The exception may be neuralink, which may not be making any real scientific progress at all. You can argue about whether the commercialization or the invention is more important, but "science" is about proof of existence and invention, not commercialization. The whole "mad genius" idea is alive and well on the commercial side, but scientists today are much more conservative and conformist.