Asger Risom
The bitter rivalry between Elon Musk and Sam Altman has exploded once again, with the billionaires trading vicious insults and scam accusations as their respective AI companies race toward competing IPOs.
Elon Musk and Sam Altman have renewed their fierce billionaire brawl as both tech titans aggressively seek to sell public market investors on their own competing visions of the artificial intelligence revolution.
The longstanding, bitter feud between the original OpenAI co-founders reignited over the weekend after the world’s richest man eagerly chimed in on a massive new lawsuit. According to a recent report from Fortune, Apple officially sued OpenAI and two former Apple employees on Friday, alleging they systematically stole confidential company trade secrets to help build up OpenAI’s nascent hardware business.
OpenAI has vehemently denied the claims, stating the company has absolutely no interest in stealing competitors’ trade secrets. However, Musk immediately pounced on the explosive Apple news to publicly lambast his former partner, reviving a Trumpian nickname by posting, “Scam Altman strikes again” on X. Over the next 24 hours, the SpaceX chief doubled down on the insults, claiming Altman “takes scamming to a whole new level” and might literally love scamming more than any human alive.
Clashing over orbital data centers and AI models
Altman quickly fired back on Saturday, directly accusing Musk of hyping unproven technology to inflate his newly public company’s valuation. In a pointed reply, the OpenAI CEO told Musk, “homeboy you’re the one sellling [sic] public market investors on short-term space datacenters,” referencing Musk’s ambitious pitch to solve Earth’s AI energy limitations by launching massive data centers into orbit.
Musk got in one final, brutal jab, claiming SpaceX will start flying those orbital data centers next year and suggesting Altman could come see them “if your parole officer approves.” Musk then reiterated his core grievance, accusing Altman of first stealing an open-source AI charity before moving on to steal all of Apple’s phone technology.
The public clash coincides with a massive week for both companies. Last week, tensions erupted again when OpenAI released its highly anticipated GPT-5.6 Sol model just one day after Musk’s SpaceXAI announced Grok 4.5. Altman confidently boasted that 5.6 Sol is currently the best model in the world, adding that “the most reliable way to tell is that elon is obsessed with me again.”
A bitter history heading toward competing IPOs
The bad blood between the two tech leaders dates back to 2015 when they closely worked together to get OpenAI off the ground as a nonprofit research lab. After a severe falling out over the company’s direction and a failed takeover attempt by Musk in 2018, the billionaire cut his funding and left the board.
The feud eventually spilled into the courtroom earlier this year when Musk formally sued Altman, alleging he had abandoned OpenAI’s original charitable mission to construct an opaque, for-profit empire. Although a jury tossed the lawsuit in May due to the statute of limitations, Musk has vowed to appeal the ruling.
Now, their rivalry is playing out directly on the stock market. Musk’s SpaceX recently executed a record-setting initial public offering in June, fully integrating his xAI venture into the rebranded SpaceXAI. During that exact same month, OpenAI confidentially filed draft paperwork for its own highly anticipated IPO, setting the stage for an unprecedented financial showdown between the two AI giants.
