“I’ll fight Zuckerberg any place, any time, any rules,” Musk stated to reporters with a smile.
Zuckerberg’s reaction and social media buzz
The report of Musk’s challenge quickly went viral on Threads, prompting Zuckerberg to respond, “Are we really doing this again?” Meanwhile, social media platforms, especially X (formerly Twitter), were abuzz with reactions and opinions on this “indirect” interaction between the tech giants.
User Reactions on X:
- “Someone’s going to ask Zuck about this, and he’ll probably just say Musk isn’t serious, so it’s not worth discussing.”
- “Not this again. We’re still waiting for the last time they said they’d fight.”
- “Let’s go. Fight of the year. A true heavyweight battle.”
- “Looks like the tech giants are taking their rivalry to the next level! Who knew the battle for digital dominance would turn into a test of physical prowess.”
- “I bet these two are secretly good friends.”
Elon Musk vs Mark Zuckerberg: A history of rivalry
The competitive banter between Musk and Zuckerberg has been a hot topic, especially since their initial “cage match” challenge in 2023. Their companies, Tesla and Meta, have had heightened tensions, particularly after Meta launched Threads, a text-based conversation app, in July 2023. This led X to send a cease-and-desist letter to Meta, accusing it of using Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property improperly.
Musk’s recent praise for Zuckerberg
Interestingly, Musk’s challenge came just a day after he praised Zuckerberg for Meta’s new AI model, Llama 3.1. This model, which Meta claims is superior to OpenAI’s GPT-4, is open-source and available for public use. Musk responded to a post by Andrej Karpathy, the former AI director at Tesla, stating: “It’s impressive, and Zuck deserves recognition for making it open-source.”
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