A war of words between tech billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg has led to the two men challenging each other to a cage fight.
The dispute has broken out after Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. META, -0.95% hinted it was planning to launch a social media platform that would be a direct rival to Twitter, which Tesla Inc. TSLA, -5.46% CEO Musk acquired last October for $44 billion.
For more, see: Instagram is readying a Twitter-like service
Musk has been trolling Zuckerberg on Twitter — where else — and said on Wednesday, “I’m up for a cage match if he is lol.”
Zuckerberg responded on his Instagram with a screenshot of the Musk message and the response: “Send me location,” AFP reported.
Meta confirmed to AFP that the message was from Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg has recently been posting videos of his training sessions in the martial art jiu jitsu. Musk and Zuckerberg have long been rivals, who have publicly clashed over their views on a range of issues, including AI.
Under Musk, meanwhile, Twitter has been struggling to hold on to advertisers, who have fled the site after Musk allowed right-wing commentators who were previously banned to return to the platform. Musk also fired more than half the staff in his first weeks and had to rehire some after realizing they were needed for vital functions.
The cuts affected product managers, data scientists and engineers who worked on machine learning and site reliability, roles that help keep the company’s various features up and running.
The monetization-infrastructure team, which maintains the services that make money for Twitter, was cut to fewer than eight people from 30.
Musk has also reportedly stiffed vendors and clashed with landlords after failing to pay rent on some of the company’s offices.
See also: Elon Musk apologizes to laid-off Twitter employee who was Iceland’s person of the year in 2022
On Twitter, user @TrungTphan noted that Musk and Zuckerberg would not be the first pair to seek to settle a dispute in the ring. In 1992, the then CEOs of Southwest Airlines and Steven Aviations resolved a trademark dispute with an arm-wrestling competition that was subbed “Malice in Dallas.”
Tesla’s stock was down 3.3% premarket, while Meta was down 0.7%. Tesla slid the most in two months on Wednesday after a downgrade from Barclays.
For more, see: Tesla’s stock suffers deepest loss in two months
