Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg were rivals long before Dorsey mocked Facebook's metaverse plan. Theirs is just one of a dozen yearslong feuds between some of the world's most powerful tech leaders.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images; Mark Lennihan/AP Photo
- While there are many close friendships in Silicon Valley, there are also plenty of feuds.
- Some appear to be friendly rivalries, like Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Oracle founder Larry Ellison.
- Others are more contentious: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, for example, have been feuding for years.
Silicon Valley is a breeding ground for rivalries.
In a place where world-changing ideas are born and billions of dollars are at stake, it's only natural that rivalries develop between Silicon Valley's power players, ranging from friendly sparring to pointed critiques.
While some feuds, like the one between Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Oracle founder Larry Ellison, appear to be born out of a close friendship and mutual respect, others - like the one between Mark Zuckerberg and Evan Spiegel - started over a spurned acquisition offer.
Here are some of the longstanding feuds, friendly or otherwise, between some of the world's most powerful execs.
Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for WIRED25; Francois Mori/AP
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Zuckerberg have never seemed particularly chummy, but the rivalry between the two execs seems to have grown worse in the last few years.
In 2019, Facebook came under fire over its decision not to fact-check political ads. In response, Dorsey announced that Twitter would suspend political advertising altogether, saying "political message reach should be earned, not bought."
Dorsey also said at an event that October that Zuckerberg's argument that Facebook is an advocate for free speech "a major gap and flaw in the substance he was getting across," and that "there's some amount of revisionist history in all his storytelling."
For his part, Zuckerberg hasn't been shy about criticizing Twitter, saying in an all hands that same month that "Twitter can't do as good of a job as we can," according to leaked audio obtained by The Verge.
Two months later, Dorsey unfollowed Zuckerberg on Twitter.
Since then, Dorsey has criticized Facebook's rebranded logo, proclaimed that he doesn't use any Facebook products, and hinted that he and Zuckerberg have "beef," saying that the two CEOs take "different approaches."
Most recently, Dorsey mocked Zuckerberg's plan to turn into Facebook into a "metaverse company," calling the concept dystopian.
Elon Musk and Jeff BezosREUTERS/Joshua Roberts
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk aren't competitors in any earthly pursuits, but they're bitter rivals when it comes to outer space.
Bezos founded his rocket company, Blue Origin, in 2000, while Musk founded SpaceX in 2002. Two years later, the pair met for dinner, and even then, things were getting testy.
"I actually did my best to give good advice, which he largely ignored," Musk said after the meeting.
In 2013, their rivalry heated up when SpaceX tried to get exclusive use of a NASA launch pad and Blue Origin filed a formal protest with the government (SpaceX eventually won the right to take over the pad.) Months later, the two companies got into a patent battle, and soon after, Bezos and Musk took their feud public, trading barbs on Twitter.
Their rivalry has flared up from time to time since then, but things came to a head in 2021 amid multiple legal filings from Blue Origin regarding SpaceX and a flurry of public criticism from Musk.
After he surpassed Bezos as the world's richest person, Musk taunted the Amazon founder by telling Forbes he planned to send "a giant statue of the digit '2' to Jeffrey B., along with a silver medal."
Elon Musk and Bill GatesPascal Le Segretain, Sean Gallup / Getty Images
The strife between Gates and Musk first flared up February 2020 when Gates said during an interview with YouTuber Marques Brownlee that while Tesla has helped drive innovation and adoption of electric vehicles, he didn't buy a Tesla when making a recent vehicle purchase — he bought a Porsche Taycan.
In response, Musk tweeted that his conversations with Gates have always been "underwhelming."
Then, in July, Gates said in an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box" that Musk's comments about COVID-19 were "outrageous," as Musk has frequently downplayed the severity of the virus and questioned how the US had handled its coronavirus response.
Musk took to Twitter a few days later to taunt Gates, tweeting, "Billy G is not my lover" and "The rumor that Bill Gates & I are lovers is completely untrue."
Gates also critiqued Musk over his space ambitions, telling Kara Swisher "I don't think rockets are the solution" and that he'd rather spend money on vaccines. He also warned against buying into the mania over cryptocurrencies, which Musk frequently promotes on Twitter.
"My general thought would be that, if you have less money than Elon, you should probably watch out," Gates told Bloomberg.
Tim Cook and Mark ZuckerbergAP; Francois Mori/AP
Cook and Zuckerberg have traded insults over the years, beginning as early as 2014, when Cook said in an interview that "when an online service is free, you're not the customer. You're the product," seemingly in reference to Facebook.
In the aftermath of Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which private Facebook user data was stolen from 50 million users, Recode's Kara Swisher asked Cook what he would do if he was in Zuckerberg's shoes. He responded: "What would I do? I wouldn't be in this situation."
Zuckerberg was reportedly so incensed by Cook's comments that he asked executives to switch to Android phones.
In a company blog post in 2018, Facebook confirmed the feud between the two execs: "Tim Cook has consistently criticized our business model and Mark has been equally clear he disagrees."
The pair reportedly had a meeting at the Sun Valley conference in 2019, during which Zuckerberg asked Cook for advice regarding the Cambridge Analytica scandal. According to The New York Times, Cook told Zuckerberg to delete all user data it collects from outside its apps, the equivalent of rendering Facebook's business model obsolete. Zuckerberg was reportedly stunned.
More recently, the two CEOs were at odds over an Apple privacy update that allows users opt out of being tracked for advertising purposes. Facebook repeatedly denounced the change, saying it could destroy part of its business.
Elon Musk and Mark ZuckerbergSusan Walsh/AP; Erin Scott/Reuters
Musk and Zuckerberg have clashed since as far back as 2016 when a SpaceX rocket explosion destroyed a Facebook satellite. Zuckerberg issued a heated statement saying he was "deeply disappointed" about SpaceX's failure.
In 2017, Zuckerberg criticized people who have concerns about the future of artificial intelligence — an opinion Musk has frequently voiced — calling those anxieties "really negative" and "pretty irresponsible." In response, Musk said that he's discussed AI with Zuckerberg and called his understanding of the subject "limited."
One year later, Facebook became embroiled in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and Musk publicly deleted his companies' Facebook pages, tweeting that the company gave him "the willies." After Sacha Baron Cohen spoke out in favor of increased regulation of Facebook, Musk tweeted: "#DeleteFacebook It's lame.
Then, following the riot at the US Capitol in January 2021, Musk used Twitter to share memes linking the riots to Facebook. On the evening of the rampage, Musk tweeted, "This is called the domino effect," along with an image of dominoes, with the first one labeled "a website to rate women on campus," a reference to Facebook's inception at Harvard University. The last domino was about the rioters.
Kevin Systrom and Jack DorseyGetty Images; Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters
Instagram founder Kevin Systrom and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey started out as close friends, but had a falling out around the time Instagram sold to Facebook.
According to the book "No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram" by Sarah Frier, the pair met when they were early employees at Odeo, the audio and video site created by eventual Twitter cofounders Ev Williams and Noah Glass. Dorsey expected to dislike Systrom when he joined as a summer intern in the mid-2000s, but the pair ended up bonding over photography and expensive coffee.
Systrom and Dorsey stayed in touch even after Systrom got a full-time job at Google. Systrom was an early proponent of Twitter (then known as Twttr), and when he started working on Burbn, the precursor to Instagram, he reached out to Dorsey for guidance. Dorsey ended up becoming an early investor, putting in $25,000. When Burbn pivoted to Instagram, Dorsey became one of the app's biggest fans, cross-posting his Instagrams to Twitter and helping the app go viral soon after it launched. Dorsey eventually attempted to buy Instagram, but Systrom declined, saying he wanted to make Instagram too expensive to be acquired, according to Frier.
The Dorsey-Systrom relationship appeared to have soured in 2012, when Dorsey found out that Instagram had signed a deal to be acquired by Facebook, Twitter's biggest rival. According to Frier, Dorsey was hurt that Systrom hadn't called him first to discuss the deal, or to negotiate one with Twitter instead.
Dorsey hasn't posted to his Instagram account since April 9, 2012, when he snapped a photo of an unusually empty San Francisco city bus — according to Frier, it was taken the morning he found out Instagram had sold. While Systrom had been quiet on Twitter for the last few years, he's recently begun using the platform again, and in 2020, the pair even had a pleasant tweet exchange.
Marc Benioff and Larry EllisonKimberly White/Getty Images; Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Oracle founder Larry Ellison and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff met when Benioff began working at Oracle when he was 23. He was a star early on, earning a "rookie of the year" award that same year and becoming Oracle's youngest VP by age 26. He spent 13 years at Oracle, during which he became a trusted lieutenant to Ellison.
Benioff began working on Salesforce with Ellison's blessing, and Ellison became an investor, putting in $2 million early on.
But since then, the duo has publicly feuded on multiple occasions. In 2000, Oracle launched software that directly competed with Salesforce. Benioff asked Ellison to resign from Salesforce's board, and Ellison refused (he eventually left the board, but Benioff let him keep his stock and options).
Over the years, Benioff and Ellison have sparred off and on: Ellison once mocked Salesforce, calling it an "itty bitty application" that's dependent on Oracle, while Benioff has called Oracle a "false cloud." And in 2011, Ellison ordered that Benioff be removed from the speaker lineup of Oracle's OpenWorld conference, which Benioff said was because Oracle was afraid he'd give a better speech.
But throughout it all, Benioff has described Ellison as his mentor. "There is no one I've learned more from than Larry Ellison," Benioff said in 2013.
Larry Ellison and Bill GatesJustin Sullivan/Getty Images; Mike Cohen/Getty Images for The New York Times
Gates and Ellison may have patched things up these days, but back in the late '90s and early 2000s, they had a touchy relationship, mostly defined by Ellison trying to outdo Gates.
"He's utterly obsessed with trying to beat Bill Gates," former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold once told Vanity Fair. "I mean, the guy's got six billion bucks. You'd think he wouldn't be so dramatically obsessed that one guy in the Northwest is more successful. [With Larry] it's just a mania."
Their animosity partly stemmed from Ellison's close friendship with Steve Jobs, a frequent opponent of Gates. But things took a more serious turn in 2000 when Microsoft was being investigated by the federal government over antitrust violations.
At the time, several groups were openly supportive of Microsoft, and Ellison suspected they were being funded by Microsoft itself. He hired private investigators to in an attempt to out Microsoft and help out the feds. Eventually, Microsoft lost the suit, and Gates stepped down as Microsoft CEO.
Evan Spiegel and Mark ZuckerbergMichael Kovac/Getty Images; Francois Mori/AP
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and Mark Zuckerberg don't seem to have a friendly relationship, and it may extend as far back as 2012, when Spiegel may have tried to one-up Zuckerberg when he attempted to arrange a meeting.
Since then, Snap has reportedly turned down an acquisition offer from Facebook on three separate occasions.
Facebook has mimicked many of Snapchat's features over the years — both on its own app and its subsidiary, Instagram — and the CEOs have made jabs at each other in public. In 2018, after Facebook cloned yet another Snapchat feature, Stories, Spiegel said: "We would really appreciate it if they copied our data protection practices also," a dig at Facebook's various privacy scandals.
Steve Jobs and Bill GatesBeck Diefenbach/Reuters; Mike Cohen/Getty Images for The New York Times
In the early days of Apple and Microsoft, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates got along — Microsoft made software for the Apple II computer, and Gates was a frequent guest in Cupertino, where Apple is headquartered.
But the tides started to turn in the early '80s, when Jobs flew up to Microsoft's headquarters in Washington to try to convince Gates to make software for the Macintosh computer. Gates later described it as "a weird seduction visit" and said he felt like Jobs was saying "I don't need you, but I might let you be involved."
Still, they remained relatively friendly until 1985, when Microsoft launched the first version of Windows and Jobs accused him of ripping off the Macintosh.
"They just ripped us off completely, because Gates has no shame," Jobs later told his biographer, Walter Isaacson, to which Gates replied: "If he believes that, he really has entered into one of his own reality distortion fields."
The duo traded barbs for years, with Jobs calling Gates boring and Gates calling Jobs "weirdly flawed as a human being." Tensions remained high even after Microsoft invested in Apple to keep it afloat, with both Gates and Jobs insulting each other and their companies' products time and time again.
Still, they clearly respected and admired each other, despite their animosity. When Jobs died in 2011, Gates said: "I respect Steve, we got to work together. We spurred each other on, even as competitors. None of [what he said] bothers me at all."
Mark Zuckerberg and Kevin SystromGetty Images; Francois Mori/AP
Mark Zuckerberg and former Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom used to get along well — so well that Zuckerberg bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012.
But in the intervening years, the relationship between the two executives seemingly fell apart. When asked why he left the helm of the company he founded, Systrom said, "no one ever leaves a job because everything's awesome."
According to an April 2019 piece from Wired's Nick Thompson and Fred Vogelstein, Systrom and cofounder Mike Krieger left because of increasing tensions with Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg reportedly became increasingly controlling, banning Systrom from doing magazine profiles without approval, taking away Facebook tools that helped Instagram grow, testing location-tracking while Systrom was out on paternity leave, and adding a new button to Instagram that Systrom detested.
Steve Jobs and Michael DellBeck Diefenbach/Reuters; Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
In 1997, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell was asked for his opinion on Apple, which, at the time, was in dire straits. He responded that he'd "shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."
That comment irritated Steve Jobs, who told his team in response: "The world doesn't need another Dell or HP. It doesn't need another manufacturer of plain, beige, boring PCs. If that's all we're going to do, then we should really pack up now." At an Apple keynote shortly after, Jobs said Dell's comments were "rude" and told him that Apple was coming for him.
Dell later softened his comments, saying that he was trying to make clear that he wasn't for hire.
But Dell rankled Jobs enough that, in January 2006, Jobs sent around this memo to the entire company: "Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future. Based on today's stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today."
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