Yahoo Finance Musk vs Zuckerberg: 'Clear winner' as on tech titan boasts $200m a day feat
It all began back in June 2023, when the Tesla boss said he’d be up for a “cage match”.
In 2023, two of the world’s richest tech titans started talking about a fight. It never came to physical blows, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a clear winner.
Elon Musk got punched in the face and he never even got to fight.
It all began back in June, last year, when the Tesla boss said he’d be up for a “cage match”.
Mark Zuckerberg responded with the claim that he just needed to know the location and he’d be there.
The fight briefly looked like it was going to actually happen - it even has its own Wikipedia page. I think I speak for all of us when I say we were looking forward to it.
But, after a while, it became clear the head of Meta was keen on a formal affair, with rules, to raise money for charity. Musk, however, just wanted to rumble, possibly even in someone’s backyard.
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By late 2023, Zuck appeared to back away, saying the moment had passed. Since then, he’s taken the fight to the arena that matters: business. And it’s been a knockout.
Look at the performance over the past year. The CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook) has added $2,000 million a day in value to his investors, almost tripling the value of his company. The CEO of Tesla, meanwhile, has cost his investors around $100 million a day, as the value of his company fell by 5 per cent.
The chart above sets the two companies equal a year ago and uses an index to compare changes since that date.So, the values on the vertical axis are arbitrary.
But we can look at the actual market capitalisation too. That way we can compare the pair in dollar terms.
Here it is over a short time frame – the months since Musk proposed a cage match. We can see that, in June last year, Musk’s company was worth several-hundred-billion dollars more than Zuckerberg’s company. But, while Musk was weightlifting and practicing his ‘walrus’ fight moves, Zuck snuck up and hit him where it really hurts. Now, Meta is worth double what Tesla is worth.
Both men own about 13 per cent of their companies, so you might assume Zuck is now richer than Musk. But don’t forget all the other pies in which the Tesla founder has a finger.
Musk is also the owner of SpaceX, Twitter and several other small companies. According to Forbes estimates, Musk is still richer than Zuckerberg, although the gap is closing!
The turning points
Four things have happened that have driven Tesla down and Meta up:
Tesla’s new cybertruck is not a runaway hit. It’s rusty and expensive. The company has no new products on the horizon, while Chinese competitors are flooding the zone.
Meta launched a Twitter clone called Threads, which is eating Twitter’s lunch. It’s quite a good user experience, in my view. (I have accounts on both Twitter and Threads).
Facebook announced a dividend. American companies pay dividends less often than Australian companies because their tax structure makes it less beneficial. But, in January 2024, Zuckerberg announced a dividend of 50 cents a share would be paid each quarter. That’s a pretty low yield for a share priced at $400+. You collect $2 a year for every share you own. It’s like a 0.5 per cent interest rate for parking your money in the bank of Facebook. But it was enough to make the stock pop.
Musk’s reputation has taken a hit, as his political views have been exposed and a big expose in the Wall Street Journal revealed the extent of his drug taking (tranquilisers, hallucinogens, party drugs etc).
The multi-divorced father of 10 says none of his friends has asked him to go to rehab though.
They say those who burn brightest burn fastest. Musk’s rise into the business stratosphere has been extremely fast and extremely bright.
Is he going to burn out? We will see.
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