Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the world's richest man, doesn't like Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg, the CEO of (META) -) Platforms and the creator of Facebook, feels much the same about Musk. Both tech moguls have been very open about their conflict over the years, but in recent weeks, the feud jumped up to a new level.
Musk in June challenged Zuckerberg to a cage match, something Zuckerberg -- who recently won several medals in a jiu-jitsu competition -- eagerly accepted. UFC president Dana White said at the time that both men are "dead serious" about the fight.
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In the weeks after the gauntlet was thrown, Zuckerberg finally launched his long-anticipated Twitter alternative, a text-based platform called Threads. The Threads app gained more than 30 million sign-ups hours after going live, according to the CEO. Before the successful launch day was over, Twitter had sent Meta a cease-and-desist letter, accusing the company of copying its platform.
We took a look at the long-standing feud between two of the world's wealthiest men.
It Begins With SpaceX in 2016
A crewless Falcon 9 rocket, which was carrying Facebook's first satellite, exploded on the launch pad in 2016, destroying the satellite. The Amos-6 satellite was part of a Facebook venture, that has since fizzled out, to bring internet access to other parts of the world.
The satellite, according to Spaceflight Now, was worth $200 million.
Zuckerberg wasn't pleased.
"As I'm here in Africa, I'm deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX's launch failure destroyed our satellite that would have provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent," he said in a statement at the time.
Musk later addressed the incident -- long before he bought Twitter -- in a response he tweeted to journalist Kerry Flynn.
"Yeah, my fault for being an idiot," Musk said. "We did give them a free launch to make up for it and I think they had some insurance."
Things Heat up With Facebook in 2018
A prominent list of people got rid of their Facebook accounts in 2018 in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data-breach scandal, which saw Meta settling for $725 million.
Elon Musk was one of those people.
Musk deleted the Facebook page for both Tesla and SpaceX, saying that Facebook gives him the "willies."
It’s not a political statement and I didn’t do this because someone dared me to do it. Just don’t like Facebook. Gives me the willies. Sorry.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2018
#DeleteFacebook Continues in 2020
Musk doubled down on his anti-Facebook rhetoric in 2020 in response to a tweet from actor Sacha Baron Cohen who likened Zuckerberg to an "emperor" with a monopoly on information. Cohen said that "Facebook needs to be regulated by governments, not ruled by an emperor" and Musk took the call as an opportunity to say, once again, what he thinks of Zuckerberg's iconic app.
#DeleteFacebook It’s lame
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 8, 2020
"#DeleteFacebook," Musk tweeted. "It's lame."
Musk Has an Issue With Zuckerberg's Empire in 2022
Musk, during an interview at the TED conference in Vancouver, took another swing at Zuckerberg, this time taking issue with Zuckerberg's control over Meta's list of popular social media platforms.
By way of answering a question about a potential conflict of interest if he were to go ahead and buy Twitter, Musk went after Zuckerberg.
"As for media sort of ownership, I mean, you've got Mark Zuckerberg owning Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp, and with a share ownership structure that will have Mark Zuckerberg the 14th still controlling those entities," he said. "We won't have that at Twitter."
Zuckerberg Hits the Drawing Board After Musk's Chaotic Twitter Takeover in 2022
In the wake of Musk's $44 billion purchase of Twitter in November 2022, and the subsequent chaos that rippled throughout the platform, Meta employees got to work brainstorming a Twitter alternative, according to a New York Times report.
“Twitter is in crisis and Meta needs its mojo back,” one employee wrote in a post viewed by the Times. “LET’S GO FOR THEIR BREAD AND BUTTER.”
Meta's chief product officer, Chris Cox, highlighted that same Twitter chaos in a recent June meeting, according to the Verge.
"We’ve been hearing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run,” Cox said.
Musk Isn't Pleased With Zuckerberg's Threads
Flash forward to July 2023 and that Twitter rival Meta was working on is now live; the platform had a strong launch amid recent Twitter outrage over temporary limitations and was called "the best competition to Twitter yet" by a Twitter engineer.
But Musk -- beyond the cease-and-desist letter Twitter sent to Meta -- spent the day accusing Meta of cheating off of Twitter, all while bringing up some of his earlier gripes with Meta's privacy policy and social media empire.
And though the feud between the two tech titans -- whose combined wealth is around $350 billion -- has been seemingly public-facing for a while, they have each complained about the other behind closed doors, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
Zuckerberg wants the kind of respect Musk seems to have, while Musk is annoyed at how easily Zuckerberg seemed to make so much money.
"I'd say round one is off to a good start!" Zuckerberg, who wants Threads to hit one billion users, a milestone Twitter has been unable to reach, said in a Threads post July 6.
As Threads seeks to threaten Twitter's position, the mounting conflict between the two moguls might soon make its way off the internet and into the ring.
