On the sidelines of the AI summit, Elon Musk and Sam Altman exchanged a few barbs again. The rivalry between the two billionaires and former colleagues dates back to the founding of OpenAI.
The essentials –
– Elon Musk, in conflict with Sam Altman, offered to buy OpenAI. Which the latter firmly refused.
– The two entrepreneurs were once allies and co-founded OpenAI. Elon Musk left the project in 2018 and is now looking to reposition himself in the AI field with his own company xAI.
– Elon Musk has filed lawsuits accusing Altman of “betraying” the organization’s founding principles, but it’s hard to say for sure whether he actually plans to buy it.
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Elon Musk is at it again. After Xavier Niel, the boss of SpaceX , Tesla and X, a high-ranking member of Donald Trump’s administration, he took a dislike to the figure of American tech: Sam Altman, boss of OpenAI, the company behind the ChatGPT conversational agent. On Feb 10th’s evening, while he was at the Elysée Palace on the sidelines of the summit, he learned that a group of investors led by Elon Musk was offering to buy the non-profit organization behind OpenAI, for just under $100 billion, at $97.4B.
Sam Altman’s response: “OpenAI is not for sale.” Shortly after, he assures that this announcement is purely aimed at destabilizing the company. And adds a personal attack, which Elon Musk himself could have made.
“I think that [Elon Musk’s] whole life is explained by a lack of confidence,” Sam Altman criticized on Bloomberg TV on Tuesday. He makes me sad.”
“Elon Musk is upset that he is no longer part of OpenAI”
Yet the two billionaires weren’t always so opposed. About ten years ago, “when Altman launched Open AI, he called on the cream of the tech world. And as soon as we looked for investors, Elon Musk’s name immediately came up,” says Boris Manenti, author of Elon Musk, Le Bonimenteur, and head of the economics department at Nouvel Obs .
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In 2015, they were co-CEOs of the company, alongside nine other founders. At the time, the goal was to ensure that the entire AI sector would not fall into the hands of Google . Elon Musk finally left the project in 2018. “He thought he would do better if he took care of it alone and tried to absorb OpenAI into Tesla,” but the rest of the team did not give in, recalls Boris Manenti.
Today, the richest man in the world owns xAI, an artificial intelligence company whose model, “Grok”, was integrated into the X interface. And he doesn’t appreciate not making headlines like ChatGPT, Claude, Le Chat or Deepseek.
“Elon Musk is upset that he is no longer part of OpenAI and not mentioned among the creators,” continues Boris Manenti. It was the same with Tesla, whose two founders he ousted.” “I am the reason why OpenAI exists,” the businessman decried in May 2023 on the American channel CNBC. And the size of his ego doesn’t stop there.
“He may see in Sam Altman a younger version of himself: multi-entrepreneur, welcomed everywhere,” explains the author. He is also his “other” on the political level: “he is a Democrat, in favor of LGBTQ+ rights and universal income.”
In 2024, Elon Musk is back at it. In March, he filed a complaint against OpenAI, accusing Sam Altman of “betraying” the founding principles of the organization (non-profit) by seeking to restructure the business. Then in the summer, he filed a new procedure, again to prevent the organization from becoming a for-profit company.
“It needs to exist and senses that other American AI companies will soon have a shot at it,” emphasises Boris Manenti. If he wants to make a name for himself, he has succeeded. If he really wants to buy OpenAI, he will still have to overcome a major obstacle: Microsoft, which has invested more than $10 billion in the project and integrates AI into its own software, may not intend to abandon its ally.
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