The rivalry between Elon Musk and Sam Altman returned to the public eye on Saturday (11), when the two executives exchanged direct attacks on X. The trigger was the lawsuit filed by Apple against OpenAI on Friday (10), with accusations of theft of trade secrets.
Musk and Altman founded OpenAI together in 2015, alongside engineers and scientists, as a non-profit organization focused on artificial intelligence (AI) research. Musk left the board in 2018 after donating tens of millions of dollars to the organization.
Years later, it sued OpenAI and Altman, alleging that the CEO had built OpenAI’s “opaque network of for-profit affiliates.” The case went to trial in California in 2026; the jury ruled in favor of Altman and Musk announced that he would appeal the decision.
Confrontation at X
- Upon seeing a publication about the Apple lawsuit, Musk wrote on X: “Scam Altman strikes again…” — a nickname that the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX had already used to refer to Altman on several occasions over the last year;
- Minutes later, he posted: “He takes scamming to a whole new level.” He then shared a photo of Altman with the words “I’m doing this because I love it,” adding, “By ‘it’ he means scam” and two laughing emojis. Musk even responded to the publication itself: “He may literally love scams more than any human being alive!”;
- Altman responded with a post that has racked up more than 11 million views: “Dude, you are what you are selling to public market investors, short-term space data centers.” Musk replied: “We start flying next year. Maybe you can come and see if your parole officer approves”;
- In a separate post, Altman linked Musk’s attention to the recent launch of the GPT-5.6 Sol: “There are many benchmarks that suggest the 5.6 Sol is the best model in the world right now, but the most reliable way to know is that Elon is obsessed with me again.”
Week of launches and IPOs
That same week, SpaceXAI — the result of SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI — launched the Grok 4.5 generative AI model, while OpenAI introduced GPT-5.6 Sol. In the days leading up to the in-person showdown, Musk and Altman had promoted their respective X launches.
Weeks earlier, SpaceX — which controls the OpenAI, for its part, confidentially filed its own IPO application.
Apple, spokesperson and other reactions
When the profile @iliketeslas stated on
The post prompted Nikita Bier, head of product at X, to comment: “Amazing trade secrets too, some of the best.” Musk responded with a face emoji with tears of joy. On Friday, an OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC: “We have no interest in the trade secrets of other companies.”
Source: www.olhardigital.com.br
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