PARIS — An unlikely feud between Elon Musk and French tech billionaire Xavier Niel escalated Monday evening when the Tesla CEO clapped back after being called a “dick.”
“This guy was sent to prison for being a literal pimp with a cadre of prostitutes,” Musk wrote on X in response to a clip of Niel calling him “the world’s greatest entrepreneur and, on the top of that, a very complex guy… maybe sometimes a dick [un connard].”
Musk was likely referring to Niel’s 2004 legal troubles, when he was placed under formal investigation and temporarily detained by police during a probe into “aggravated procurement” charges, as reported by several French outlets, linked to his own part ownership of peep show venues at the time.
Niel was later cleared on those charges but received a suspended prison sentence for embezzling funds in some of his X-rated businesses. He is more widely known as the founder of the low-cost mobile provider Free.
Niel appeared to take Musk’s comment in jest.
The back-and-forth between the two tech bros comes amid a major artificial intelligence summit being held in Paris. Niel was among the entrepreneurs French President Emmanuel Macron consulted ahead of the summit and before announcing a privately-funded €109 billion AI strategy. Of that sum, €3 billion comes from Niel’s company, Iliad.
Musk skipped the summit, claiming that he was “in the middle of critical work in Washington DC” while opening the door to participating in the event remotely. Meanwhile, the X owner launched an unsolicited $97.4 billion bid to buy the nonprofit that runs the ChatGPT AI chatbot, OpenAI. The offer was rejected by founder Sam Altman.
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