Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates – which billionaire tech CEOs have had the biggest feuds?
From belittling each others’ products to fighting to reach space first, the heads of Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Tesla and other Silicon Valley firms have frequently bumped heads in a spectacularly public fashion
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 long-standing feuds, friendly or otherwise, between some of the world’s most powerful execs.
Marc Benioff and Larry Ellison
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 vice-president 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 US$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).