Elon Musk and Sam Altman have renewed their long-running dispute over the evolution of OpenAI, an artificial intelligence company led by Altman, through a series of sharply worded posts on X. The latest exchange followed Apple NASDAQ:AAPL, a technology company that operates the App Store, filing a lawsuit against OpenAI on Friday over the alleged theft of trade secrets. Musk responded to a post about the lawsuit by accusing Altman of scamming, repeating a label he has used for the OpenAI chief executive several times over the past year. Musk later published additional posts targeting Altman, including an edited image suggesting that Altman's stated motivations were connected to scamming. OpenAI rejected the underlying trade-secret allegation, with a company spokesperson telling CNBC on Friday that it had no interest in the trade secrets of other companies.
Altman responded by questioning Musk's claims to public-market investors regarding short-term space data centers. Musk, the chief executive of Tesla NASDAQ:TSLA, an electric-vehicle company, and SpaceX NASDAQ:SPCX, a space company, replied that SpaceX would begin flying the data centers next year and invited Altman to see them. The exchange attracted significant attention on X, with Altman's post receiving more than 11 million views. The renewed dispute also follows Musk's earlier lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI, which alleged that the two companies engaged in anti-competitive conduct that placed Grok below competing artificial intelligence chatbots and image generators in App Store rankings.
Altman separately suggested that Musk's renewed focus on him was connected to OpenAI's latest model release. He pointed to benchmarks that he said indicate 5.6 sol may be the strongest model in the world, while using Musk's criticism as another sign of competitive attention. For investors, the latest confrontation may highlight the increasingly aggressive rivalry surrounding artificial intelligence models, app-store distribution and emerging data-center infrastructure. The public exchanges could also keep attention on the legal and reputational risks facing OpenAI, Apple and Musk-led companies as competition across the artificial intelligence market continues to intensify.