Sam Altman Despises Elon Musk. Now He Is Going After His Companies

Forbes

The OpenAI CEO is challenging his former friend, one company at a time. Twitter, Tesla and even Neuralink are in his sights.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhyatt/2025/08/16/sam-altman-despises-elon-musk-now-he-is-going-after-his-companies/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00Today on Forbes, Sam Altman despises Elon Musk. Now he is going after his companies.

00:07Over the last year, the feud between Silicon Valley heavyweights Sam Altman and Elon Musk

00:13has devolved into personal attacks, social media swipes, and lawsuits.

00:19Musk calls his foe Scam Altman and Swindley Sam.

00:23Altman has said that Musk, quote, can't be a happy person, and that his, quote,

00:27whole life is from a position of insecurity.

00:31Just this past week, after Musk announced he plans to sue Apple for allegedly promoting Altman's

00:36OpenAI on the App Store over his own startup, XAI, Altman called out Musk for manipulating

00:42X to, quote, benefit himself and his own companies. Musk responded by calling Altman a liar.

00:50The two men famously co-founded OpenAI as a non-profit in 2015, before Musk left the

00:57organization's board three years later, following a failed power grab. After OpenAI released

01:03ChatGPT to public acclaim in late 2022, Musk founded XAI in March 2023 and promoted it

01:10as the so-called anti-woke alternative.

01:14Last year, Musk sued Altman to stop him from turning OpenAI into a for-profit entity.

01:21Altman countersued, claiming Musk has worked, quote, non-stop to torpedo OpenAI.

01:28But the rivalry between OpenAI and XAI is now just one front in the larger war between Altman

01:33and Musk. Altman has been making moves, both through OpenAI and with his own expansive investment

01:40portfolio, to develop products and technologies that target several of Musk's businesses.

01:45Altman is backing a new brain-computer interface startup called Merge Labs, which will directly

01:51compete with Musk's own brain-computer interface outfit, Neuralink. This, according to reports

01:57from the Financial Times.

01:59Altman is a co-founder of the new venture, which is seeking to raise capital at an $850 million

02:04valuation. Weirdly, Altman is also a small investor in Neuralink.

02:09Musk co-founded Neuralink, which had a recent valuation of $9 billion, in 2016, and he's

02:16its largest individual shareholder.

02:19Meanwhile, Altman is positioning OpenAI to compete directly with Musk's X, the social

02:25media platform formerly known as Twitter.

02:28OpenAI is working to build a social media arm that would be a, quote, X-like social network,

02:33according to The Verge, which first reported on those plans in April.

02:36OpenAI's push into social networking could potentially pose a big threat to X. At last

02:43count, X has around 600 million monthly users, per Statista. OpenAI says ChatGPT is more popular,

02:51with 700 million weekly users.

02:54And Altman is coming after Tesla, too. Compared to a year earlier, sales of Tesla vehicles plummeted

03:0013.5% in the second quarter of 2025, leading Musk to pivot to self-driving taxis as a potential

03:07future area of growth for his electric vehicle maker.

03:11In May on CNBC, Musk said, quote,

03:14My prediction is by the end of next year, we'll have hundreds of thousands, if not over a million,

03:18Teslas doing self-driving in the U.S.

03:22Maybe. But there is little evidence to support Musk's claim, given that no Tesla vehicles are

03:27currently approved for full self-driving. In June, OpenAI announced it had partnered with

03:33self-driving software maker Applied Intuition, which had a recent valuation of $15 billion,

03:39to, quote, advance next-generation AI-powered experiences in vehicles worldwide.

03:45Altman then hailed OpenAI's progress in developing self-driving tech,

03:49while also obliquely dissing Tesla's progress.

03:52On his brother's podcast, Uncapped with Jack Altman, Sam Altman claimed, quote,

03:58We have some new technology that could just do self-driving for standard cars

04:01way better than any current approach has worked.

04:05Altman has also backed the company Longshot Space, which dreams of taking on Musk's SpaceX

04:10with a gigantic gun that shoots satellites into orbit.

04:14He has also invested in Glideways, another robocar startup that could one day compete with

04:19Tesla's self-driving robo-taxis. Neither Musk nor Altman responded to Forbes' requests for comment

04:25for the story. The 54-year-old Musk and the 40-year-old Altman weren't always at odds.

04:31The two men first met in the early 2010s, when Altman was president of startup incubator Y Combinator,

04:37and Musk was working to build out SpaceX and Tesla. The two men bonded over their shared concern

04:42about the dangers of artificial intelligence, and they co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a non-profit

04:47with the mission of developing AI in a responsible manner.

04:53For full coverage, check out John Hyatt's piece on Forbes.com.

04:58This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.

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