After praising Zuckerberg; Elon Musk says ready to fight him anytime

Just when the hype around the Elon Musk-Mark Zuckerberg duel seemed to be fading, the Tesla chief has rekindled speculations with latest 'ready to fight' remark

In a surprising turn of events, Tesla chief Elon Musk transitioned swiftly from applauding Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to expressing readiness to confront him "any place, any time".

The unexpected appreciation came shortly after Musk acknowledged Meta's latest AI model, Llama 3.1, in response to a tweet by former Tesla AI director Andrej Karpathy. Congratulating Meta on the model's release, Karpathy highlighted its capabilities and open accessibility. Musk, in a tweet, commended Zuckerberg for open-sourcing Llama 3.1.

“It is impressive and Zuck does deserve credit for open-sourcing (allowing free public access),” he wrote. According to reports, Llama 3.1 has outperformed OpenAI’s GPT-4.

Musk's praise raised eyebrows, given his previous accusations against Meta for alleged intellectual property violations. These allegations stemmed from Meta's launch of Threads, which Musk claimed involved unlawful use of Twitter's trade secrets.

In a reaction to Musk's initial appreciation, one user on X commented, "Strange to see Musk & Zuck come to similar conclusions, but refreshing," while another praised Musk's gesture as "gracious."

However, Musk's positive stance quickly shifted during his visit to Capitol Hill (Washington DC), where he proclaimed his readiness to confront Zuckerberg. Speaking to reporters before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to Congress, Musk declared, "I’ll fight Zuckerberg any place, any time, any rules," a statement that has since gone viral on social media.

Musk's comment again triggered a barrage of reactions with one user commenting, "This will be crazy if it happens.”

Musk-Mark chequered past

The two tech moguls decided to join forces for the launch of a satellite in 2016. However, the collaboration between the two billionaires went sour when Mark’s $200 million satellite exploded in a pre-launch test accident on one of Musk’s SpaceX rockets.

Following the explosion, Mark wrote on Facebook that he was “deeply disappointed” that “SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite.” Subsequently, Mark took a swipe at Musk for the latter's take on the dangers associated with artificial intelligence. “Naysayers try to drum up doomsday scenarios,” said Mark.

Responding to Mark, Musk wrote on X, “I’ve talked to Mark about this. His understanding of the subject is limited.” In 2018, Musk took the feud a step further by tweeting, “What’s Facebook?”

Eventually, the ‘word-war’ escalated to a point where Musk wrote that he was up for a ‘cage match’. While the tweet seemed like another one of Musk’s candid remarks, Zuckerberg took the challenge seriously and posted a screenshot on Instagram of Musk’s tweet with the caption, “send me location”. Musk again responded, saying, “Vegas Octagon”.

Adding fuel to the fire, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) president Dana White claimed that both billionaires were 'dead serious' about the fight. Just when the hype around the duel seemed to be fading, Musk has rekindled speculations with latest 'ready to fight' remark.