Elon Musk And Sam Altman Spar On X After Apple Files OpenAI Lawsuit
5 72"Elon Musk and Sam Altman criticized each other in new posts on X," reports CNBC, "highlighting the billionaires' long-standing tussle over OpenAI's evolution." This week, SpaceX released the Grok 4.5 generative AI model, while OpenAI debuted its own GPT-5.6 Sol. For days, Musk and Altman have hyped up their respective releases, but on Saturday the rivalry got personal. In response to a post about Apple filing suit against OpenAI on Friday over alleged theft of trade secrets, Musk wrote, "Scam Altman strikes again ...." Minutes after his post, Musk doubled down, writing, "He takes scamming to a whole new level." Next, Musk published a photo of Altman that included the words, "I'm doing this because I love it."
"By 'this' he means scamming," Musk wrote, including two rolling-on-the-floor-laughing emojis. Musk then replied to that post, writing, "He might literally love scamming more than any human alive!"
The flurry of social activity got Altman's attention. "[H]omeboy you're the one sellling public market investors on short-term space datacenters," Altman wrote in an X post of his own that garnered over 11 million views.
"We start flying them next year. Maybe you can come see them if your parole officer approves," Musk fired back.
Separately, Altman put Musk's fresh wave of attention in the context of OpenAI's fresh model release. "[T]here are a lot of benchmarks that suggest 5.6 sol is the best model in the world right now, but the most reliable way to tell is that elon is obsessed with me again," Altman wrote on X.
Reacting to another post, Altman wrote that he was "not afraid of apple, but i have tremendous respect for them. s-tier company," CNBC reports — leading to a sarcastic response from X's head of product. "Incredible trade secrets as well, some of the best."
And CNBC notes that Musk "replied with a face-with-tears-of-joy emoji."
5 comments
Awful people are trading insults on Twitter (Score: 5, Funny)
by subreality ( 157447 ) on Sunday July 12, 2026 @03:15PM (#66234898)
This is not news for nerds. This is not stuff that matters.
I know that ship sailed long ago, and slashdot is kinda mid-grade engagement bait these days, but come on, there is no pretense of substance in this one. It's monkeys flinging poo on the front page. Please try to be better than this.
Re:Awful people are trading insults on [Slashdot] (Score: 5, Interesting)
by shanen ( 462549 ) on Sunday July 12, 2026 @04:20PM (#66234966)
Wrong on both counts, though I concur that the selection of stories could be better. MUCH better. Why don't you become a Slashdot editor?
It's pretty sad that so many nerds idolize these fools as role models. Maybe just young wannabe nerds, but they still gobble up this kind of news and gossip.
Even sadder that their petty squabbles and twisted personalities matter so much. This is how the money works these years. But I think the funniest part is that their patron saint Adam Smith is to completely misunderstood. He was mostly talking about how the invisible hand had managed to keep things working up to that time, but at the same time he was removing the cloak of invisibility. I would argue that he therefore deserve a lot, perhaps even the lion's share, of the blame for what has happened to the economies of the world since then.
Just doing some "research" on "crucified on a cross of shareholder value", but I should have asked more about who. As in all of us.
Returning to my modified Subject, I confess I was exaggerating for clickbait effect. I don't think most of the people on Slashdot are that awful and the great insult artists of yore are long gone, too. But there was a time when I thought some Slashdot discussions could be part of actual solutions in the actual world, which has become a funny thought of its own on a website that is simultaneously seriously deficient in funny.
(Yesterday's trip to the library netted an anti-AI book, an anti-monopoly book, and one humor book from a long-dead humorist. Current priority book is neuroscience and still digesting Careless People about the awful people of Facebook.)
Two of the most powerful men on Earth (Score: 5, Interesting)
by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday July 12, 2026 @04:01PM (#66234940)
Are bickering like children in public. At a certain point you take the gun away from the children. That gun is the stupid amount of money that they have.
You don't have to take the gun away from the child but you don't get to complain when the kids shoots you.
In this case the metaphor means they are going to load your 401K with bogus crap stock that's going to collapse and you're going to be working until you drop dead.
Alien vs. Predator (Score: 5, Insightful)
by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Sunday July 12, 2026 @04:04PM (#66234944)
Whoever wins, we lose.
This is like the Gambino and Genovese crime families going at each other.
Re:Alien vs. Predator (Score: 5, Funny)
by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Sunday July 12, 2026 @06:34PM (#66235084)
More like Beavis vs. Butthead
I recall this one episode where the boys are tasked with doing a chocolate bar fundraiser for their school. IIRC, they manage to sell a single candy bar and then "loan" the dollar between each other repeatedly until they've purchased (and eaten) all the chocolate for themselves. What an absolutely perfect unintentional metaphor for the tech bro industry.