The OpenAI CEO is challenging his former friend, one company at a time. Twitter, Tesla and even Neuralink are in his sights.<\/p>\n
Over the last year, the feud between Silicon Valley heavyweights Sam Altman and Elon Musk has devolved into personal attacks, social media swipes, and lawsuits. Musk calls his foe Scam Altman and Swindly Sam. Altman has said that Musk \u201ccan’t be a happy person” and that his “whole life is from a position of insecurity.” Just this week, after Musk announced he plans to sue Apple for allegedly promoting Altman\u2019s OpenAI on the app store over his own startup xAI, Altman called out Musk for manipulating X to \u201cbenefit himself and his own companies.\u201d Musk responded by calling Altman a liar.<\/p>\n
The two men famously co-founded OpenAI as a non-profit in 2015 before Musk left the organization\u2019s board three years later following a failed power grab. After OpenAI released ChatGPT to public acclaim in late 2022, Musk founded xAI in March 2023 and promoted it as the \u201canti-woke\u201d alternative. Last year, Musk sued Altman to stop him from turning OpenAI into a for-profit entity. Altman countersued, claiming Musk has worked “nonstop” to torpedo OpenAI.<\/p>\n
But the rivalry between OpenAI and xAI is now just one front in the larger war between Altman and Musk. Altman has been making moves, both through OpenAI and with his own expansive investment portfolio, to develop products and technologies that target several of Musk\u2019s businesses.<\/p>\n
Altman is backing a new brain-computer interface startup called Merge Labs, which will directly compete with Musk\u2019s own brain-computer interface outfit Neuralink, the Financial Times reported<\/a> this week. Altman is a cofounder of the new venture, which is seeking to raise capital at a $850 million valuation. (Weirdly, Altman is also a small investor in Neuralink). Musk cofounded Neuralink (recent valuation: $9 billion) in 2016, and is its largest individual shareholder.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Altman is positioning OpenAI to compete directly with Musk\u2019s X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. OpenAI is working to build a social media arm that would be an \u201cX-like social network,\u201d according to The Verge, which first reported<\/a> on those plans in April. OpenAI\u2019s push into social networking could potentially pose a big threat to X. At last count, X has around 600 million monthly users (per<\/a> Statista). OpenAI says ChatGPT is more popular, with 700 million weekly users.<\/p>\n And Altman is coming after Tesla too. Compared to a year earlier, sales of Tesla vehicles plummeted 13.5% in the second quarter of 2025, leading Mush to pivot to self-driving taxis as a potential future area of growth for his electric vehicle maker. \u201cMy prediction is by the end of next year, we\u2019ll have hundreds of thousands if not over a million Teslas doing self-driving in the U.S,\u201d Musk said<\/a> in May on CNBC. Maybe. But there is little evidence to support Musk\u2019s claim, given that no Tesla vehicles are currently approved for full self-driving. In June, OpenAI announced<\/a> it had partnered with self-driving software maker Applied Intuition (recent valuation: $15 billion) to \u201cadvance next-generation, AI-powered experiences in vehicles worldwide.\u201d Altman then hailed OpenAI\u2019s progress in developing self-driving tech, while also obliquely dissing Tesla\u2019s progress: \u201cWe have some new technology that could just do self-driving for standard cars way better than any current approach has worked,\u201d Altman claimed<\/a> his brother\u2019s podcast, Uncapped with Jack Altman.<\/p>\n Altman has also backed the company Longshot Space, which dreams<\/a> of taking on Musk\u2019s SpaceX with a gigantic gun that shoots satellites into orbit (seriously). He has also invested<\/a> in Glydways, another robocar startup that could one day compete with Tesla\u2019s self-driving robotaxis.<\/p>\n Neither Musk or Altman responded to Forbes\u2019 requests for comment for this article.<\/p>\n Musk, 54, and Altman, 40, weren\u2019t always at odds. The two men first met in the early 2010s when Altman was president of startup incubator Y Combinator and Musk was working to build out SpaceX and Tesla. The two men bonded over their shared concern<\/a> about the dangers of artificial intelligence, and they cofounded OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit with the mission of developing AI in a responsible manner. Musk was the organization\u2019s largest individual backer, donating $44 million in 2016 and 2017.<\/p>\n Elon Musk and Sam Altman speak onstage at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit on October 6, 2015 in San Francisco, California, back when they were still friends. (Photo by Michael Kovac\/Getty Images for Vanity Fair)<\/p>\n Getty Images for Vanity Fair<\/p>\n Musk left OpenAI\u2019s board in 2018 after he allegedly tried and failed<\/a> to merge the entity into Tesla, but even then, the two men seemingly remained on good terms. In 2019, during a difficult time for Tesla, Altman railed against those who \u201croot against\u201d the EV maker and warned that \u201cbetting against Elon is historically a mistake.\u201d When OpenAI launched its ChatGPT product to the public in November 2022, Musk praised the chatbot as \u201cscary good\u201d and scolded the New York Times for not sufficiently writing about ChatGPT.<\/p>\n The vibes started souring in 2023, as Musk was laying the seeds of xAI. Musk posted a meme that February that claimed ChatGPT had usurped the mainstream media as \u201cthe captain of propaganda.\u201d The following month, Musk expressed concern that Microsoft had \u201cexclusive access to the entire OpenAI codebase\u201d as part of its $13 billion investment in the startup. Still, the two men were at least publicly friendly with one another, trading jokes and philosophical observations. \u201cWe live in the most interesting of times,\u201d Musk said in October 2023, in response to Altman\u2019s musings about being alive in today\u2019s day and age.<\/p>\n One month later, Musk was mocking ChatGPT as \u201cinsufferable\u201d and using Grok (xAI\u2019s chatbot) to generate disses of the chatbot. \u201cThe woke mind virus, which is fundamentally anti-human, has been deeply ingrained into ChatGPT!\u201d Musk railed in one tweet. After a short-lived coup which briefly saw Altman ousted as OpenAI\u2019s CEO, Musk warned that the organization needed \u201cdirectors who deeply understand AI and will stand up to Sam\u201d and that \u201chuman civilization is at stake.\u201d<\/p>\n Musk accelerated the conflict in early 2024 when he made a $97.4 billion bid for OpenAI\u2019s assets (despite them not being for sale) and then sued OpenAI, Altman and fellow cofounder Greg Brockman in California, alleging that their plans to convert OpenAI into a for-profit enterprise violated the nonprofit\u2019s founding contract. Musk withdrew his lawsuit before a state judge could rule on whether to dismiss it, but then filed a similar lawsuit in federal court. This April, OpenAI countersued Musk, alleging that he engaged in a \u201cyearslong harassment campaign\u201d against OpenAI in court and social media posts, and that his $97.4 billion offer was a \u201csham bid\u201d designed to hurt OpenAI. The judge has denied Musk\u2019s request to block OpenAI\u2019s restructuring plans, tossed out some of Musk\u2019s claims and permitted OpenAI\u2019s counterclaim to proceed. A jury trial is scheduled for next year.<\/p>\n As the ill-will between the men deepens, many in Silicon Valley are getting their popcorn out and enjoying the show. Vinod Khosla, the legendary billionaire investor who has warned of AI\u2019s potential dangers<\/a>, says that ultimately, the pair\u2019s rivalry will be good for the ecosystem as a whole. \u201cMore competition is always good,\u201d he told Forbes via email.<\/p>\n Good luck convincing Musk or Altman of that.<\/p>\n \nMore from ForbesForbesGoogle And Pollster Scott Rasmussen Will Use AI To Survey Americans\u2019 Political ViewsBy Richard Nieva<\/a>ForbesInside The Richest Presidential Cabinet EverBy Kyle Khan-Mullins<\/a>ForbesZuckerberg Squandered His AI Talent. Now He\u2019s Spending Billions To Replace It.By Rashi Shrivastava<\/a>ForbesLonger Leash On Life: Inside The Dog Longevity StartupBy Amy Feldman<\/a>ForbesAs Meme Stocks Make A Comeback, Beware This Tax TrapBy Kelly Phillips Erb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The OpenAI CEO is challenging his former friend, one company at a time. 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