Elon Musk, who has earlier accused Meta of ‘unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property’ after the launch of Meta’s Threads, acknowledged Zuck’s contribution to the field of AI.

In the ongoing rivalry between tech magnates Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg latest development is that the SpaceX CEO has unexpectedly praised Zuckerberg’s recent achievements. This rare instance of public praise comes on the heels of Meta’s release of its latest AI model (Llama 3.1).

Llama 3.1 has reportedly outclassed OpenAI’s GPT-4. Notably, Llama 3.1 is an open-source AI model permitting free public access. Musk, who has earlier accused Meta of “unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property” subsequent to the launch of Meta’s Threads, recognized Zuckerberg’s contribution to the field of AI.

Andrej Karpathy (the former director of Tesla AI) highlighted the release of Llama 3.1 on X (formerly Twitter). Musk reacted to Karpathy’s post, stating, “It is impressive, and Zuck does deserve credit for open-sourcing.” This comment has generated whole lot of reactions on social media. Many users have appreciated Musk’s honest recognition of Zuckerberg’s work. One user remarked, “Strange to see Musk & Zuck come to similar conclusions, but refreshing,” while another exclaimed, “Musk approves Zuck.” A third user observed, “You are a fair man, Elon. This is what positive competition looks like. You deserve much more love than you’re receiving these days.”

Nevertheless, this rare moment of mutual respect does not essentially signal an end to the rivalry between Musk and Zuck. Recently, a social media post by Meta CEO celebrating Independence Day sparked controversy. Zuck posted a video on Instagram on July 4, showing him wakeboarding while holding an American flag and a beverage. The post received extensive attention and praise from fans. In stark contrast, Musk in his characteristic style appeared to take a jab at Zuckerberg’s display. Commenting on the video, Musk wrote, “May he continue to have fun on his yachts. I prefer to work.”

Musk (Tesla CEO) and Zuckerberg (Meta CEO) have been at odds too often, with the Tesla CEO frequently taking jabs at Meta CEO and even challenging him to a cage fight after Meta launched Threads to compete with X. Nonetheless, there is one area where the two tech magnates find common ground: artificial intelligence.

Musk and Zuckerberg find common ground in AI

Both Zuckerberg and Musk have clearly desire to dominate the AI space. In January, Zuckerberg divulged in an interview with The Verge that Meta had been amassing AI chips from Nvidia, stating, “We have built up the capacity to do this at a scale that may be larger than any other individual company. I think a lot of people may not appreciate that.” Similarly, Musk’s AI startup, xAI, raised whopping $6 billion during its Series B funding round in May.