The feud between Musk and Altman has, over time, encompassed a slew of lawsuits, email dumps and social media digs.
Their rivalry can be traced back a decade, with Musk’s now public belief that OpenAI, under Altman’s leadership, abandoned the principles he and others used to found it in 2015.
The firm was created with the intention of building artificial general intelligence (AGI) – AI that can perform any task that a human being is capable of – but by making its technology open-source and promising to “benefit humanity”.
OpenAI was also set up as a not-for-profit company, meaning it would not aim to make money, but in 2019 it established a for-profit arm which Musk felt was antithetical to its original mission.
Musk argued in his March 2024 lawsuit that the firm had instead been focusing on “maximising profits” for its major investor Microsoft.
And while he unexpectedly dropped his lawsuit last year, OpenAI then filed a counter-suit against him in April.
It claimed the X owner had engaged “non-stop” in “bad-faith tactics” to try and slow down the company’s AI development.
OpenAI has also claimed Musk is not motivated by preserving the company’s founding mission – but rather by his “own agenda”.
And the feud has not stopped at just words and legal action. In February, Musk made a shock move to try and buy the company for $100bn (£74bn) – a bid rejected by OpenAI’s board.
