OpenAI co-founders-turned-rivals Elon Musk and Sam Altman traded several jabs on X over the weekend. While the two have gone back and forth online plenty of times before, this latest spat was prompted by news that Apple is suing OpenAI.
“Scam Altman strikes again,” Musk wrote Saturday morning in response to a post about the lawsuit.
The iPhone maker filed the suit Friday in a California federal court, accusing OpenAI and two former Apple employees who now work at the AI company of stealing trade secrets related to Apple’s manufacturing processes and products still in development.
Musk quickly seized on the news as another opportunity to attack Altman.
“He takes scamming to a whole new level,” Musk wrote in a separate post.
“He might literally love scamming more than any human alive!” he continued in yet another post.
It didn’t take long for Altman to fire back at Musk.
“[H]omeboy you’re the one sellling public market investors on short-term space datacenters,” Altman wrote, referring to SpaceX’s recent IPO.
“We start flying them next year. Maybe you can come see them if your parole officer approves,” Musk replied.
Altman also suggested Musk’s renewed attention is due to OpenAI’s latest AI model.
“[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 Saturday.
The latest in an ongoing fued
The exchange was just the latest round in Musk and Altman’s years-long feud.
Musk helped launch OpenAI with Altman and several others in 2015 but left in 2018 following disagreements over the company’s direction. He later founded the rival AI company xAI, which is now part of SpaceX.
Musk sued OpenAI and Altman in 2024, accusing them of fraud. He claimed he had been misled into co-founding and funding OpenAI under the belief that it would remain a nonprofit. His lawsuit alleged that Altman built a secretive network of for-profit affiliates, took control of the nonprofit’s board, engaged in self-dealing and diverted its talent and technology for financial gain.
A federal jury ruled in favor of Altman and OpenAI earlier this year.
Now, Altman and OpenAI face a new legal battle with Apple.
Apple’s complaint against OpenAI
Apple’s complaint alleges that OpenAI Chief Hardware Officer Tang Tan, a former Apple vice president, directed Apple employees interviewing with OpenAI to share company secrets during the hiring process. Tan is named as a defendant in the suit.
“He has directed job candidates still working for Apple to bring ‘actual parts’ from Apple to their interviews for ‘show and tell’ sessions in which he and his team at OpenAI can elicit still more Apple confidential information,” the lawsuit states.
Apple also alleges that Chang Liu, a former senior system electrical engineer at the company who now works at OpenAI, stole an Apple laptop. Additionally, Liu is accused of having downloaded dozens of confidential hardware files. Liu is also named as a defendant.
“This much is clear, however: at every level, from members of its Technical Staff to its Chief Hardware Officer, and in coordination with business partners, OpenAI has been stealing Apple’s trade secrets and confidential information,” Apple said in the lawsuit.
“We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets,” OpenAi said in a statement to Reuters. “We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.”
OpenAI and Apple did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s requests for comment.
Suit is the latest evidence of widening rift
The lawsuit marks a major shift in the relationship between the companies, which began to sour as OpenAI started to make moves into consumer hardware.
OpenAI acquired io, the hardware startup founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive, for $6.5 billion last year. Apple’s lawsuit also names io as a defendant.
Apple and OpenAI previously struck a partnership in 2024 to integrate ChatGPT into Apple devices. However, earlier this year Apple anounced it was revamping Siri with Google’s Gemini models.
For his part, Altman appears to be downplaying the lawsuit.
“[I] am not afraid of apple, but i have tremendous respect for them. s-tier company,” he wrote on X.
