Angel Investor Nikita Bier Once Displayed A Giant Painting Of Tim Cook Overlooking Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Desk — And The Latter Wasn't Too Impressed

Nikita Bier, angel investor and the founder of Gas and TBH, both of which were acquired by Discord and Facebook, respectively, has shared a funny story involving Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook and Meta Platforms Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

What Happened: On Tuesday, Lenny Rachitsky shared a sneak peek of his conversation with Bier, during which the investor and founder disclosed that he and Zuckerberg once shared a desk.

During that time, Bier brought several items from his previous office to Facebook including a pop art painting of Cook, which he had bought off the street.

Bier found the painting both amusing and representative of Apple’s dominance over their fate, prompting him to hang it near his workspace at Facebook.

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Upon moving to the area where Zuckerberg was situated, he hung the painting on the wall, effectively placing a large painting of Cook in a position where it overlooked Zuckerberg. “It was basically a giant painting of Tim Cook overlooking Zuck,” he stated.

Eventually, an executive assistant asked Bier to remove the painting from the office. “Eventually one of the EAs said ‘Actually, do you think you could take that home,'” he narrated.

.@nikitabier hung a giant painting of Tim Cook near his desk at Facebook—right near Zuck's desk.

Zuck was not amused. pic.twitter.com/fbfZSQI9Um

— Lenny Rachitsky (@lennysan) August 20, 2024

The complete podcast featuring this conversation will be released on Sunday.

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Why It Matters: Meta and Apple have been locking horns over the years. Recently, the companies made headlines when the Cook-led tech giant reportedly rejected Zuckerberg’s proposal to integrate its AI chatbot, Llama, into the iPhone.

Last month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also slammed Apple saying he wants to avoid the iPhone maker’s “soul-crushing” tactics by launching the largest open-source AI model to date.

“It is somewhat soul-crushing to go build something that you think is going to be good and then just get told by Apple you can't ship it because they wanted to put us in a box because they view us as competitive,” Zuckerberg said at the time.

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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

Photos courtesy: Shutterstock and Flickr