The tech world nearly got the strangest power duo imaginable earlier this year: Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
According to new court filings from OpenAI, Musk approached Zuckerberg in February to join his unsolicited bid to buy the AI giant outright. The offer? A staggering $97.4 billion — which, in retrospect, looks like a bargain, given OpenAI’s recent sky-high valuation of nearly $500 billion.
Zuckerberg, however, didn’t sign on. Instead, Musk’s proposal was backed by close associates, leaving the Meta CEO on the sidelines.
But the fact that Musk even considered partnering with Zuckerberg is a twist worthy of a Silicon Valley soap opera. After all, these are two men with one of the most visible rivalries in tech — a feud that has ranged from billion-dollar competition to, quite literally, a proposed cage fight.
A Feud Written in Silicon
The Musk-Zuck rivalry dates back nearly a decade. In 2016, SpaceX lost a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Facebook satellite intended to expand internet access in Africa. Zuckerberg publicly blasted Musk, saying he was “deeply disappointed” in SpaceX.
Since then, the pair have traded jabs about everything from artificial intelligence (Zuck: optimistic, Musk: apocalyptic) to business ethics. Their differences came to a boil in 2023 when they briefly entertained the idea of a UFC cage match, with Dana White hyping it up as potentially “the biggest fight of all time.” The fight fizzled out, with Musk suggesting he needed surgery and Zuckerberg moving on to Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitions.
Still, the image of the two billionaires squaring off remains a meme-factory dream.
What If They Actually Teamed Up?
Musk and Zuckerberg working together on an OpenAI acquisition would have been nothing short of seismic. Imagine Musk’s relentless ambition paired with Zuckerberg’s vast user base and data infrastructure.
A Musk-Zuck partnership could theoretically:
- Consolidate enormous influence over the future of AI.
- Put enormous pressure on Sam Altman’s OpenAI and even Google’s DeepMind.
- Reshape regulatory debates around AI, with governments scrambling to contain the combined power of two of the world’s most controversial tech leaders.
Instead, the two remain competitors. Musk continues to build out xAI and its chatbot, Grok, while Meta invests billions into its own LLaMA AI models. For now, their battle remains one of parallel empires, not an alliance.
Musk vs. Altman: The Core Battle
The revelation comes amid Musk’s ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing CEO Sam Altman of abandoning its nonprofit mission in pursuit of profit. OpenAI argues Musk’s campaign amounts to “harassment” designed to slow them down.
The irony? Musk himself once co-founded OpenAI as a nonprofit, only to later split from the group after disagreements with Altman. His $97 billion takeover attempt looks, at least in part, like an effort to reassert control over the AI revolution he helped ignite.
The Bottom Line
The idea of Musk and Zuckerberg working together on anything is wild enough. That it could have been a joint $100 billion grab for OpenAI — the world’s most hyped AI company — feels like a plot twist too bizarre even for HBO’s Succession.
It didn’t happen. But the fact it was even considered underscores just how much the future of AI is wrapped up in personality clashes, power grabs, and, yes, almost-cage matches.
For now, Musk and Zuckerberg are still rivals, still sniping, and still circling each other in the biggest tech showdown of our time.
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