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Techbros Sam Altman and Elon Musk traded jibes online over the status of OpenAI Inc., after the AI company they co-founded turned into for-profit enterprise following an investment from Microsoft Corp. last week.
“You stole a non-profit,” Musk wrote on X, formerly Twitter, responding to Altman's post from 31 October 2025 where he shared the screenshots of his attempts to cancel a reservation for a Tesla Roadster from 2018 which hasn't made it to production until now.
“I helped turn the thing you left for dead into what should be the largest non-profit ever,” Altman said in response, quoting Musk's post. “You know as well as anyone a structure like what Openai has now is required to make that happen.”
“You also wanted Tesla to take OpenAI over, no non-profit at all. And you said we had a 0% of success. Now you have a great AI company and so do we. Can't we all just move on?”
The beginnings of OpenAI
In December 2015, Sam Altman and Elon Musk—along with former Stripe CTO Greg Brockman among others—got together to build “artificial general intelligence that benefits all of humanity—and to ensure that no single company or government controls super-intelligent AI”.
OpenAI was set up as a non-profit research organisation with contributions of up to a $1 billion by the co-founders. The idea was to make AI research open-source, countering the secrecy of Google and DeepMind.
Elon Musk's exit from OpenAI
In 2018, Musk left as he reportedly felt that OpenAI was falling behind Google and DeepMind in talent and resources. After resigning from the board, Musk said he would continue to donate but stopped funding OpenAI soon after.
Essentially Musk and Altman had different visions — while Musk wanted to emphasise AI safety and existential risk, Altman wanted to make OpenAI a leading research institution focused on innovation.
English (US) ·