Yesterday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took to X — Elon Musk’s platform — to post three screenshots telling a story about how his 2018 order for the next-gen Tesla Roadster was mishandled. Altman emailed to cancel his reservation after several years of delays, asking for the $50,000 security deposit to be issued back to him, only to find out that the email address for reservations was seemingly no longer operational.
Musk, in a fiery reply, said “you stole a non-profit,” following it up with another reply claiming how the order was refunded within 24 hours but that it’s in Altman’s “nature” to mislead. This exchange was symbolic of the world’s richest man’s general sentiment toward his former partner, stoking the fires of a bitter rivalry between these two AI bros once again.
Back in 2015, when OpenAI was founded as a non-profit, Elon Musk was one of the co-founders alongside Sam Altman, who now serves as the CEO of both OpenAI Foundation and OpenAI PBC — its recently restructured for-profit company. Musk famously left OpenAI in 2018 due to potential “future conflict of interest,” with reports suggesting he was unhappy with the commercial direction OpenAI was treading in. After their breakup, Sam Altman and Elon Musk have always engaged in rivalry, one that has only intensified since Musk’s xAI arrived on the scene.
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For instance, Musk tried to block OpenAI from pivoting to a for-profit firm back when he was part of the board, suggesting a merger with Tesla who could fund the company’s research. When the proposal didn’t go through, he left, but the story didn’t end there. Last year, the Tesla and xAI boss filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, citing his disdain for Altman and Brockman (another co-founder), saying they had “abandoned OpenAI’s founding mission,” but there wasn’t much legal ground to stand over, and it was later withdrawn.
In recent years, OpenAI has become the poster boy for the front-end of artificial intelligence, much like how Nvidia has for the back end. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that ChatGPT ushered in one of the biggest technological revolutions of our lifetimes, sending many big players into a frenzy over how to compete. Companies like Google, who’d been previously known for AI or machine learning, were famously hesitant to deploy models to the public, but OpenAI changed that rhetoric almost overnight.
Elon Musk’s xAI, the firm behind the controversial chatbot Grok that you find explaining basic concepts on X, has emerged as a key proponent in this race. Musk is building large data centers, buying up lots of AI GPUs, and planning to create his own in the future, all in a bid to compete with OpenAI (and others). There’s a subtle irony in criticizing your peer for doing the exact same thing you’re doing, but Musk would argue that there’s a difference of intent.
OpenAI was founded to achieve AGI for the benefit of humanity, and it was turned into a profit-first company later on. OpenAI Foundation, the non-profit, still governs its commercial arm, but relies on its money to operate. It’s a hybrid model that was recently lent clarification when Microsoft and OpenAI agreed to recapitalize the company, making it easier to secure funds and work more autonomously. Musk’s statement, “you stole a non-profit” explicitly refers to that, contending that Altman has taken over OpenAI’s original mission statement.
By contrast, xAI was always intended to make a profit. It’s a standard organization developing models to be implemented inside X and commercialize through hyperscalers like Azure. There is no welfare plan in sight and Musk, therefore, has a safety net around his argument. Sam Altman never responded, but the spectators certainly got a show. Musk later replied with a laughing emoji to a screenshot of this exchange posted on X, implying a self-proclaimed moral victory over his AI brethren.
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