Musk v Zuckerberg: who’s winning?

The playgroundEVEV rivalry between and dates back years—and in who-is-cooler-than-whom terms, Mr Musk usually wins easily. As an innovator, Mr Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook and boss of Meta, a social-media giant, has often been dismissed as a geeky dilettante in a hoodie. He has never received the Promethean kudos Mr Musk has for turning Tesla into a stallion of electric vehicles (s) and SpaceX into a rocket sensation. Mr Zuckerberg is notorious for his motto “move fast and break things”, which may have helped Facebook conquer the world but gave licence to critics to cast it as a social menace. Mr Musk is revered as a rule-breaker, plays up his bad-boy image and mostly gets away with it.Such was the tenor of their relationship when Mr Musk proposed a cage match with Mr Zuckerberg in June last year just before Meta launched a short-messaging app, Threads, to compete with Mr Musk’s Twitter (now X). Forget the physical fight that never happened. In business terms, even then Mr Musk had the upper hand. He was the richest man on Earth. Tesla’s market value, though falling, was higher than Meta’s. Its revenues were growing faster. Yet since then, he could not have kicked himself harder in the teeth. In the past few weeks Tesla has shocked investors with a horror-show earnings presentation. Mr Musk’s $56bn pay package from 2018 was rescinded by a judge, which has slashed his net worth. From America to China, his s have suffered recalls.