Musk, Altman Trade Insults on X After Apple’s OpenAI Lawsuit

Elon Musk and Sam Altman renewed their public feud on X this weekend. The clash came days after Apple sued OpenAI over alleged trade secret theft.

The exchange escalated quickly, with both billionaires trading insults tied to their companies’ competing artificial intelligence ambitions.

The spat follows Musk’s May trial loss. A jury ruled he waited too long to sue over OpenAI’s for-profit shift.

We start flying them next year. Maybe you can come see them if your parole officer approves. After stealing an open source AI charity, you then stole all of Apple’s phone technology! Wow.What do you plan for an encore? That’s tough to beat.

Musk cofounded OpenAI with Altman in 2015 before leaving its board in 2018. Tensions deepened after Musk pushed for control of the lab and later withheld promised funding, straining OpenAI’s finances.

Weeks after the trial verdict, SpaceX completed its record IPO, raising a reported $75 billion. OpenAI has since filed confidentially for its own listing, adding fresh rivalry to the companies’ AI model race.

Reacting to Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI, Musk wrote, “Scam Altman strikes again …” He followed with several mocking posts calling Altman obsessed with scamming.

Altman fired back, referencing the timing of OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol release against Musk’s Grok 4.5 launch, and stating that the SpaceX founder is ‘obsessed’ with him.

there 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

X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, also weighed in, joking about OpenAI’s “trade secrets” amid the Apple suit.