Elon Musk and Sam Altman are going tit-for-tat. At the center of their latest online beef is the OpenAI CEO’s reservation for Tesla’s long-delayed Roadster.
Musk took to his social media platform, X, on Saturday to criticize Altman for posting screenshots earlier in the week that showed his attempt to cancel his Roadster order.
“A tale in three acts,” Altman earlier posted, sharing a screenshot of an email from July 2018, confirming a $45,000 payment to reserve the next-generation Tesla Roadster. Additional screenshots Altman posted showed the OpenAI CEO requesting a $50,000 refund and receiving a bounce-back email.
“I really was excited for the car! And I understand delays. But 7.5 years has felt like a long time to wait,” Altman posted on Thursday.
The Tesla CEO said Altman was only telling part of the story — and that he had already received a refund.
“And you forgot to mention act 4, where this issue was fixed and you received a refund within 24 hours. But that is in your nature,” Musk wrote.
Representatives for Tesla and Altman did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
When Musk first unveiled Tesla’s new Roadster in 2017, he said it “will be the fastest production car ever made, period.”
However, the vehicle has experienced delays and has not yet entered production, being listed as “design development” in the company’s most recent quarterly earnings report. Popular YouTuber MKBHD has also said he canceled one of his Tesla Roadster reservations due to the long wait.
During a Friday appearance on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, Musk said the coming vehicle would include “crazy technology.”
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“If you took all the James Bond cars and combined them, it’s crazier than that,” Musk said.
Musk said his team is “getting close” to unveiling the latest version of the Roadster, saying the product demo would be “unforgettable.”
Altman and Musk keep bumping heads
Altman and Musk can’t seem to stop trading barbs — both on social media and in the courtroom.
Musk was a cofounder and early financial backer of OpenAI, though he left the company’s board in 2018 and has become critical of Altman’s leadership.
“OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it “Open” AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft. Not what I intended at all,” Musk wrote in a 2023 tweet.
One year later, Musk filed a lawsuit against Altman and OpenAI, accusing the startup of violating its nonprofit mission by partnering with Microsoft. Musk’s legal team later filed an injunction against OpenAI to prevent it from becoming a for-profit company, which a spokesperson for OpenAI described as “utterly without merit.”
OpenAI has also posted what it said were Musk’s emails from his earlier involvement with the company, indicating that he previously pushed for OpenAI to merge with Tesla.
Earlier this week, OpenAI said it finished restructuring its operations, which now include its nonprofit division — OpenAI Foundation — overseeing a new public benefit corporation called OpenAI Group PBC.
