Musk vs Zuckerberg Cage Fight Will Stream on X

If you want to watch Elon Musk fight Mark Zuckerberg, you’ll need an X account.

Musk said Sunday (Aug. 6) that his planned and still unscheduled cage fight with the Facebook founder/Meta Platforms CEO will stream live on his social media platform, formerly called Twitter.

The two multibillionaires have been circling each other online for months in anticipation of a proposed mixed martial arts bout in Las Vegas.

“Zuck v Musk fight will be live-streamed on X. All proceeds will go to charity for veterans,” Musk said in a post on X.

In an earlier post, Musk described his workout regimen: “Am lifting weights throughout the day, preparing for the fight. Don’t have time to work out, so I just bring them to work.”

“Elon, what is the point of the fight?” a Twitter user asked. “Is it to motivate you to work out?”

“It’ a civilized form of war,” Musk replied. “Men love war”.

The two moguls are already engaged in an even less-physical conflict as their companies compete in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and social media.

Last month, Meta debuted Threads, a new platform meant to rival Twitter. Initially, Threads had a promising start, garnering more than 100 million users in its first two weeks.

Despite this impressive launch, PYMNTS reported that user engagement dipped on the app, with the average time users spend on Threads falling from 19 minutes to four minutes and a decline in the number of daily active users of 70% from its peak, to 13 million.

Also last month, Musk announced the launch of xAI, an AI company led by him and staffed with veterans of DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Tesla and the University of Toronto.

Meta’s own AI efforts last month’s debut of a commercial version of its open-source AI model Llama 2, unveiled in collaboration with Microsoft.

“We believe an open approach is the right one for the development of today’s AI models, especially those in the generative space where the technology is rapidly advancing,” Meta said on its blog. “By making AI models available openly, they can benefit everyone.”

Meanwhile, PYMNTS recently examined Musk’s ambitions to turn X into a financial super app in a conversation with Amias Gerety, partner at QED Investors.

“You have to start with what would it even mean for them to become a super app. I think a lot of people focus on how X might do micro payments and [integrate that functionality],” he said. “But I think, actually, the better place to start is, how many people actually use the platform?

“Journalists and politically engaged millennials are not necessarily the right place to start in terms of brand permission to start to take over people’s lives [with super app capabilities],” Gerety added. “Does X even have the brand permission to get into people’s wallets?”