Elon Musk and Sam Altman clash on X as Apple lawsuit against OpenAI reignites bitter rivalry

Elon Musk and Sam Altman spar on X after Apple files OpenAI lawsuit

Elon Musk and Sam Altman criticized each other in new posts on X, highlighting the billionaires' long-standing tussle over OpenAI's evolution. Musk and Altman helped to start OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit artificial intelligence research lab alongside a band of engineers and scientists. In 2018, Musk left OpenAI's board after donating tens of millions to the organization, although he later objected to Altman's efforts to construct "an opaque web of for-profit OpenAI affiliates" in a lawsuit that went to trial in California this year. A jury ruled in favor of Altman, and Musk said he would appeal the case. Weeks later, Musk's company SpaceX -- which controls the X social platform, the xAI lab that challenges OpenAI and the Starlink broadband internet service -- completed its landmark initial public offering. SpaceX raised a record $75 billion as it promoted plans to launch data centers into space, in addition to ambitions in enterprise AI applications and interplanetary transportation. Meanwhile, OpenAI has filed confidentially for its own IPO. This week, SpaceX released the Grok 4.5 generative AI model, while OpenAI debuted its own GPT-5.6 Sol. For days, Musk and Altman have hyped up their respective releases, but on Saturday the rivalry got personal. In response to a post about Apple filing suit against OpenAI on Friday over alleged theft of trade secrets, Musk wrote, "Scam Altman strikes again ..." The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has used the "Scam Altman" moniker to refer to the OpenAI CEO on several occasions over the past year. Minutes after his post, Musk doubled down, writing, "He takes scamming to a whole new level." Next, Musk published a photo of Altman that included the words, "I'm doing this because I love it." "By 'this' he means scamming," Musk wrote, including two rolling-on-the-floor-laughing emojis. Musk then replied to that post, writing, "He might literally love scamming more than any human alive!" The flurry of social activity got Altman's attention. "[H]omeboy you're the one sellling public market investors on short-term space datacenters," Altman wrote in an X post of his own that garnered over 11 million views. "We start flying them next year. Maybe you can come see them if your parole officer approves," Musk fired back. Separately, Altman put Musk's fresh wave of attention in the context of OpenAI's fresh model release. "[T]here are a lot of benchmarks that suggest 5.6 sol is the best model in the world right now, but the most reliable way to tell is that elon is obsessed with me again," Altman wrote on X. Elsewhere on X, the account @iliketeslas asserted that Altman is scared of Apple. That, too, prompted a response from Altman. "[I] am not afraid of apple, but i have tremendous respect for them. s-tier company," Altman wrote. Altman's post led Nikita Bier, X's head of product, to respond: "Incredible trade secrets as well, some of the best." Musk replied with a face-with-tears-of-joy emoji. On Friday, an OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC, "We have no interest in other companies' trade secrets."

'Scam Altman': Musk and Altman's weekend war on X

The two men who founded OpenAI spent the weekend trading insults on X, after Apple sued the company. Musk branded Sam Altman a "scammer" more than half a dozen times; Altman said the attention only proved his new model was working. Behind the noise: a lost lawsuit, duelling model launches, and two rivals racing to the public markets. Elon Musk lost his case against Sam Altman in court. This weekend, he tried to win it back on X, one insult at a time. The two men who founded OpenAI spent the weekend calling each other frauds in public. It played out on X, in real time, in front of millions. By the end Musk had branded Altman a "scammer" more than half a dozen times, Altman had turned the abuse into a marketing line, and X's own head of product had piled in. None of it was really about the law. It was about who gets to narrate the AI boom, and whose company the markets believe. How it kicked off The trigger was a lawsuit, though not one of Musk's. On Friday, Apple sued OpenAI for allegedly stealing hardware trade secrets. Musk pounced. "Scam Altman strikes again ...", he wrote, as CNBC's Jordan Novet reported. Minutes later he doubled down: "He takes scamming to a whole new level". He then posted a photo of Altman captioned "I'm doing this because I love it", adding his own gloss, "by this he means scamming", with two laughing emojis. The finish came moments later: "He might literally love scamming more than any human alive!" Altman hits back Altman did not let it lie. "[H]omeboy you're the one sellling public market investors on short-term space datacenters", he wrote, a jab at SpaceX's plan to launch data centres into orbit, in a post that drew more than 11 million views. Musk replied that the first ones fly next year, and that Altman could come and watch "if your parole officer approves". Altman's sharpest line reframed the whole row. Plenty of benchmarks suggested his new model was the best in the world, he wrote, "but the most reliable way to tell is that elon is obsessed with me again". The pile-on spread. When another user claimed Altman feared Apple, he replied that he was "not afraid of apple, but i have tremendous respect for them. s-tier company". Nikita Bier, X's head of product, could not resist a dig at the lawsuit: "Incredible trade secrets as well, some of the best". Musk answered with a laughing emoji. He was not finished. "After stealing an open source AI charity, you then stole all of Apple's phone technology! Wow", he wrote, according to Business Insider. "What do you plan for an encore? That's tough to beat". OpenAI, for its part, said it had "no interest in other companies' trade secrets". Why the grudge runs deep The venom has history. Musk and Altman started OpenAI together in 2015 as a non-profit. Musk left the board in 2018, then sued in 2024, accusing Altman and OpenAI of betraying that founding mission by turning the lab into a for-profit empire. The case went to trial this year. In May, a jury sided with Altman. Musk said he would appeal. He has since turned Grok into OpenAI's loudest rival, now run inside SpaceX alongside X and Starlink. The fight moves in-house It is not confined to Musk's thumbs. He has also told Tesla staff to move to Grok for internal AI work, The Information's Grace Kay reported, citing the model's lower token costs and asking employees to email him feedback. Musk then disputed the framing on X. "Legacy media is misrepresenting the situation", he wrote. He had "asked Tesla & SpaceX to try out Grok 4.5 to see if it solves their task, not use it no matter what", and staff "should continue to use other AI models if those models outperform Grok". Even inside his own companies, the fight is half substance, half spin. The timing is the tell None of it landed by accident. Both men shipped flagship models this week. OpenAI released GPT-5.6 Sol. SpaceX shipped Grok 4.5. The two labs sell rival products to the same customers, and both founders are heading for the markets. SpaceX has just raised a record $75bn in its debut. OpenAI has filed confidentially for a listing of its own. Each has a reason to make the other look ridiculous. Not everyone thinks either lab deserves the noise. Yann LeCun, Meta's former chief AI scientist, has called xAI a failure and warned of a bubble. That scepticism is part of why the fight is so loud. The court case is over. The rivalry is not. Two men who built the same company now run the two loudest labs in AI, and neither can let the other go. The next round will not be settled by a jury. It will be settled by whose story the market believes.

Apple's Lawsuit Against OpenAI Sparks Another Musk-Altman Online Spat

OpenAI co-founders-turned-rivals Elon Musk and Sam Altman traded several jabs on X over the weekend. While the two have gone back and forth online plenty of times before, this latest spat was prompted by news that Apple is suing OpenAI. "Scam Altman strikes again," Musk wrote Saturday morning in response to a post about the lawsuit. The iPhone maker filed the suit Friday in a California federal court, accusing OpenAI and two former Apple employees who now work at the AI company of stealing trade secrets related to Apple's manufacturing processes and products still in development. Musk quickly seized on the news as another opportunity to attack Altman. "He takes scamming to a whole new level," Musk wrote in a separate post. "He might literally love scamming more than any human alive!" he continued in yet another post. It didn't take long for Altman to fire back at Musk. "[H]omeboy you're the one sellling public market investors on short-term space datacenters," Altman wrote, referring to SpaceX's recent IPO. "We start flying them next year. Maybe you can come see them if your parole officer approves," Musk replied. Altman also suggested Musk's renewed attention is due to OpenAI's latest AI model. "[T]here are a lot of benchmarks that suggest 5.6 sol is the best model in the world right now, but the most reliable way to tell is that elon is obsessed with me again," Altman wrote Saturday. The latest in an ongoing fued The exchange was just the latest round in Musk and Altman's years-long feud. Musk helped launch OpenAI with Altman and several others in 2015 but left in 2018 following disagreements over the company's direction. He later founded the rival AI company xAI, which is now part of SpaceX. Musk sued OpenAI and Altman in 2024, accusing them of fraud. He claimed he had been misled into co-founding and funding OpenAI under the belief that it would remain a nonprofit. His lawsuit alleged that Altman built a secretive network of for-profit affiliates, took control of the nonprofit's board, engaged in self-dealing and diverted its talent and technology for financial gain. A federal jury ruled in favor of Altman and OpenAI earlier this year. Now, Altman and OpenAI face a new legal battle with Apple. Apple's complaint against OpenAI Apple's complaint alleges that OpenAI Chief Hardware Officer Tang Tan, a former Apple vice president, directed Apple employees interviewing with OpenAI to share company secrets during the hiring process. Tan is named as a defendant in the suit. "He has directed job candidates still working for Apple to bring 'actual parts' from Apple to their interviews for 'show and tell' sessions in which he and his team at OpenAI can elicit still more Apple confidential information," the lawsuit states. Apple also alleges that Chang Liu, a former senior system electrical engineer at the company who now works at OpenAI, stole an Apple laptop. Additionally, Liu is accused of having downloaded dozens of confidential hardware files. Liu is also named as a defendant. "This much is clear, however: at every level, from members of its Technical Staff to its Chief Hardware Officer, and in coordination with business partners, OpenAI has been stealing Apple's trade secrets and confidential information," Apple said in the lawsuit. "We have no interest in other companies' trade secrets," OpenAi said in a statement to Reuters. "We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere." OpenAI and Apple did not immediately respond to Gizmodo's requests for comment. Suit is the latest evidence of widening rift The lawsuit marks a major shift in the relationship between the companies, which began to sour as OpenAI started to make moves into consumer hardware. OpenAI acquired io, the hardware startup founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive, for $6.5 billion last year. Apple's lawsuit also names io as a defendant. Apple and OpenAI previously struck a partnership in 2024 to integrate ChatGPT into Apple devices. However, earlier this year Apple anounced it was revamping Siri with Google's Gemini models. For his part, Altman appears to be downplaying the lawsuit. "[I] am not afraid of apple, but i have tremendous respect for them. s-tier company," he wrote on X.

Elon Musk and Sam Altman are accusing each other of scamming investors as SpaceX and OpenAI jockey to lead AI revolution | Fortune

Elon Musk and Sam Altman have renewed their billionaire brawl as both seek to sell investors on their own vision of the AI revolution. The longstanding feud between the OpenAI cofounders reignited over the weekend when the world's richest man chimed in about Apple's lawsuit against OpenAI. On Friday, Apple sued OpenAI and two former Apple employees who joined the AI startup, alleging they stole company secrets to help build up OpenAI's hardware business. OpenAI has denied the claims, telling multiple outlets it "has no interest in other companies' trade secrets." Musk pounced on the Apple news to lambast Altman. "Scam Altman strikes again," Musk wrote, reviving a Trumpian nickname he has previously used to describe the OpenAI CEO. Over the next day, the SpaceX chief doubled down, replying to several other posts with put-downs like "He takes scamming to a whole new level" and "He might literally love scamming more than any human alive!" Altman shot back in a reply on X Saturday in which he claimed Musk is "the one sellling [sic] public market investors on short-term space datacenters." Musk then got in one last jab: "We start flying them next year," he said referring to the orbital data centers Altman mentioned. "Maybe you can come see them if your parole officer approves. After stealing an open source AI charity, you then stole all of Apple's phone technology! Wow..." Musk's final missive alludes to a claim that is central to the origin of the feud -- that Altman allegedly "stole" OpenAI. Feud origins Back in 2015, Musk and Altman worked together closely to get OpenAI off the ground. At the time, Altman was president of the startup accelerator Y Combinator, famous for helping launch companies like Airbnb and DoorDash, while Musk was already a multibillionaire and was running Tesla along with SpaceX simultaneously. The pair joined forces with several other cofounders to start OpenAI as a nonprofit AI research lab "to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return." One of the early motivations was reportedly to prevent Google from getting a monopoly over AI. Yet the pair had a falling out when Musk reportedly decided OpenAI was falling behind in the AI race. In 2018, he made an offer to take control of the company and considered folding it into Tesla after having already invested tens of millions of dollars, with a total of roughly $1 billion promised over the next several years. But Altman and other original OpenAI team members rejected the takeover proposal. Musk left OpenAI's board and cut off the funding he had pledged. He would later lead a group of investors that last year offered to buy the company for $97.4 billion. After the release of ChatGPT in 2022 made OpenAI one of the hottest startups on the planet, Musk and Altman's feud spilled into the courtroom. Musk sued OpenAI and Altman in 2024, alleging Altman had gone against OpenAI's original nonprofit mission by constructing an "opaque web of for-profit OpenAI affiliates" and prioritizing commercial returns. As part of his suit, Musk asked for $150 billion in damages that would be destined for a charitable trust and requested OpenAI's for-profit structure be reversed. OpenAI argued that Musk turned against the organization only after his attempt to control it failed. When OpenAI rejected his proposal in 2018, Musk said its "probability of success was zero" and that he planned to build an artificial-general-intelligence competitor within Tesla, according to a blog post published by the company. A jury in May found Musk did not meet the statute of limitations for his case and tossed out the suit. Musk has said he will appeal the ruling. While the lawsuit may have been dismissed, Musk and Altman's feud is anything but. Musk launched his own AI company xAI in 2023 and released the large language model Grok in the same year. Earlier this year, Musk's SpaceX acquired xAI and later rebranded itself as SpaceXAI, billing its newfound AI business as an essential part of the company's future prospects and valuation. SpaceX went public in a record-setting IPO in June, the same month OpenAI confidentially filed for its own IPO. Last week, the tension between the two companies erupted again as OpenAI released its new model GPT-5.6 Sol one day after SpaceXAI announced Grok 4.5. "There are a lot of benchmarks that suggest 5.6 sol is the best model in the world right now," wrote Altman on X, "but the most reliable way to tell is that elon is obsessed with me again."

Musk and Altman trade insults on X after Apple sues OpenAI

Elon Musk and Sam Altman spent part of their weekend exchanging public insults on X $TWTR after Apple $AAPL sued OpenAI on Friday over alleged trade secret theft, reigniting one of tech's most public executive rivalries. The lawsuit gave Musk, who helms SpaceX and its xAI unit, fresh ammunition to dust off his long-standing "Scam Altman" nickname for the OpenAI chief. "He takes scamming to a whole new level," Musk wrote, according to CNBC. Separately, Musk linked the lawsuit to his own prior legal claims, writing that Altman had gone from "stealing an open source AI charity" to targeting "all of Apple's phone technology." Altman answered with a post of his own on X -- "homeboy you're the one selling public market investors on short-term space datacenters" -- taking aim at Musk's push to place data centers in orbit as a way to meet AI's voracious power needs. Musk shot back that launches were on track for next year, adding a jab that Altman was welcome to witness them in person -- pending approval from his "parole officer," according to CNBC. Altman also offered his own metric for gauging OpenAI's success, posting on X: "there are a lot of benchmarks that suggest 5.6 sol is the best model in the world right now, but the most reliable way to tell is that elon is obsessed with me again." The back-and-forth unfolded against a backdrop of dueling model launches: Grok 4.5 from SpaceX and GPT-5.6 Sol from OpenAI had both dropped earlier in the week. An OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement, "We have no interest in other companies' trade secrets." At the heart of the weekend's online fireworks is Apple's Friday complaint, which names OpenAI, its hardware partner io, and a pair of ex-Apple employees -- Chief Hardware Officer Tang Yew Tan and technical staffer Chang Liu -- alleging they walked off with confidential hardware files, supplier data, and technical specifications. OpenAI acquired io, the design firm co-founded by former Apple designer Jony Ive, for roughly $6.5 billion in 2025. More than 400 former Apple employees now work at OpenAI, according to the complaint. The social media clash adds a fresh chapter to a long-running feud. The two men were among OpenAI's original founders back in 2015, though a falling-out over who should control the organization -- and how it should be funded -- eventually ended their partnership. That split eventually landed in court: Musk filed suit against Altman, OpenAI, and President Greg Brockman, and a federal jury handed down a verdict against him in May -- a decision he has since vowed to challenge on appeal, according to Business Insider. The rivalry now also plays out in financial markets. SpaceX's listing on June 12 set a record, pulling in $75 billion and ranking as the largest IPO in history. OpenAI's own path to the public markets remains uncertain; the company disclosed a confidential IPO filing in June, though its finance chief has indicated the actual listing may not arrive until late 2026 or even 2027, according to Yahoo Finance.

Elon Musk Revives Feud With Sam Altman, Says He Took 'Scamming to a Whole New Level' - Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA

Elon Musk and Sam Altman traded fiery accusations on X on Sunday, reigniting their long-running feud over AI safety, space data centers and alleged trade-secret theft. Feud Reignites Over Data Center Claims The comment echoed a post Musk made in April, when he called Altman "Scam Altman" after a New Yorker investigation questioned Altman's credibility on AI safety. The Charity Suit Resurfaces In his X post, Musk also accused Altman of taking over an open-source AI charity and stealing Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) phone technology. The remark came days after Apple sued OpenAI, alleging the company used job interviews and former employees to obtain hardware trade secrets related to its consumer device plans. Benzinga's Take: The exchange between two of the tech industry's most closely watched figures highlights the growing competition in AI and space infrastructure as both companies pursue next-generation computing capabilities. Photo courtesy: Photo Agency/Shutterstock Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.