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Preply analyzed the public speaking of various CEOs from transcripts of their appearances in YouTube videos from 60 to 180 minutes long. Preply says it looked at five factors: vocabulary breadth (the diversity of words used), vocabulary sophistication (the complexity of the chosen words), textual readability (the intricacy of sentence structures and the depth of ideas presented), critical thinking (the quality of argument formation, its deconstruction, and thorough analysis), and contextual relevance (the speaker’s prowess in linking their dialogue with broader contexts or even integrating insights from other fields).

Based on this data, Preply gave Musk a 64.33 out of a possible 100 points, below other tech CEOs like DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis (87.33), Amazon’s (former) CEO Jeff Bezos (71), Nvidia’s Jensen Huang (70.33), Netflix’s Reed Hastings (70), Meta’s Zuckerberg (69.67), and Airbnb’s Brian Chesky (65).

While the methodology isn’t robust enough to determine actual intelligence, it's probably a safe bet that Hassabis would come out on top by other measures as well, since he’s far more than an entrepreneur. Hassabis was a child prodigy at chess, and was asked by the University of Cambridge to take a gap year before he enrolled because he was two years younger than his classmates. He's also had landmark papers published in journals like Nature and Science, and holds degrees in both computer science and cognitive neuroscience.

Of course the real intellectual smackdown people care about is between Zuckerberg and Musk. The two have been left to only trade insults via their respective social networks instead of blows in a cage match. Maybe they can use this measurement to settle their beef.

More details: https://preply.com/en/blog/smartest-ceos-in-america