Billionaire entrepreneur and Twitter owner Elon Musk is picking a fight with Mark Zuckerberg — and the Facebook chief is up for it.
Musk (on Twitter, naturally) began the spat Wednesday by laughing off Zuckerberg’s Meta attempting to launch its own “sanely run” micro-blogging competitor to Twitter.
“I’m sure Earth can’t wait to be exclusively under Zuck’s thumb with no other options,” Musk said. “At least it will be ‘sane.’”
The South-African born entrepreneur then added: “I’m up for a cage match if he is lol.”
Zuckerberg responded on Instagram (which is owned by Meta) with a screenshot of Musk’s tweet, captioned: “Send Me Location.”
“If this is for real, I will do it 🔥🔥,” Musk tweeted in response to a screen-cap of the Zuckerberg Instagram Story. Later, he tweeted “Vegas Octagon,” referring to a venue used for Ultimate Fighting Championship fights.
If the two billionaires do end up going mano a mano in the Octagon, officiating the match could be a job for the EU’s Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, who is due to meet both Musk and Zuckerberg during a trip to the U.S. this week — and wants Big Tech to call him “The Enforcer.“
Asked if the exchange was serious, a Meta spokesperson told the Verge: “The story speaks for itself.”
Musk, whose unpredictable management style since he bought Twitter for $44 billion last October has included thousands of layoffs, is notorious for blundering on the platform he owns.
“Have I shot myself in the foot with tweets multiple times? Yes,” Musk said in an interview with the BBC in April. “I think I should not tweet after 3 a.m.”
Indeed, Zuckerberg might have an advantage if the billionaire bickering actually turns physical: Meta’s CEO took up Brazilian jiu-jitsu during the COVID-19 pandemic, winning his first local tournament in California last month.