It was with a tone of pained regret that Sam Altman and other OpenAI leaders responded this week to a lawsuit from Elon Musk. “We’re sad that it’s come to this with someone whom we’ve deeply admired, someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we would fail, started a competitor and then sued us,” they wrote.
Ooh, so I guess they don’t admire the co-founder of Tesla and SpaceX as deeply anymore. The resentment is mutual, given that Musk last week accused Altman’s crew of “stark betrayal” and “perverting OpenAI’s mission”. This tech bromance has turned decidedly sour.
Elon Musk is always up for a feud. Just last year, he challenged Mark Zuckerberg of Meta to a cage fight, and attacked X’s reluctant advertisers profanely. He warmed up to this one gradually before going public. “I’m just being a fool who is essentially providing free funding to a start-up,” he complained in a 2017 email to OpenAI, threatening to withdraw his financial support.