"Swindler." With just one word, Elon Musk settled one of the most public, surreal, and less serious negotiations of the short but intense era of artificial intelligence.
The tycoon had disrupted the game by announcing that he and a group of investors would make an offer of $97.4 billion for OpenAI. Sam Altman's ironic response was quick: "No thanks, but we can buy Twitter for $9.47 billion if you want." Elon Musk simply replied "swindler" to the counteroffer.
The rivalry between Musk and Altman has become the biggest existing business clash, at least on the surface, among the tech magnates who have gained even more spotlight due to their proximity to the new White House of Donald Trump, who has made them a flag of his economic proposal.
If this promise of joint prosperity at some point seemed to smooth things over between them, who were once mentor and mentee, nothing could be further from reality.
Elon Musk was one of the driving forces behind OpenAI in its early days. The startup was founded as a non-profit company that aimed to "bring the benefits of AI" to humanity and prevent it from falling into the hands of a few. At that time, Musk supported the project and considered this technology an "existential threat."
The split occurred three years later, in 2018, when Sam Altman was still a semi-known figure, and the commotion was minor and attributed to Tesla's own ambitions in AI and potential conflicts of interest.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Both in his purchase offer and in the lawsuit he filed against OpenAI in 2024, Musk has pointed out that the company goes against its founding goals of transparency and open-source.
However, according to the emails provided to the court by OpenAI, the initial fight was due to Musk wanting to control the company.
"Guys. I've had enough. Either you start something on your own or keep OpenAI non-profit. I won't fund OpenAI anymore if you don't have a firm commitment to stay, or I'll be a fool giving you free money to start a startup," Musk wrote in an email in September 2017.
The message was extensively answered by Ilya Sutskever, the founder of OpenAI who, paradoxically, tried to oust Altman from the company six years later, understanding that he was precisely betraying the purpose for which it was created by seeking profits.
At that moment, Sutskever echoed the ideas of the founders who, despite "really wanting to work with Musk" to the point of being willing to have easy dismissal clauses, were concerned that the terms created in the agreement would give the billionaire total control over a future general artificial intelligence.
"OpenAI's goal is to create a good future and prevent dictatorships. You say you're worried that democrats will create a dictatorship with general AI. So are we. That's why it's a bad idea to create a dictatorship where you could become a dictator if you want," the engineer pointed out in the email.
Since then, the company has been in Musk's crosshairs, who has criticized it from the moment ChatGPT started to take off.
Since then, the executive's criticisms have ranged from personal attacks, with Altman as a favorite target, to his alliances with Microsoft and practically any action taken by the company.
Prior to the purchase offer, the latest move was the launch of Stargate, a project worth over $500 billion driven by Donald Trump, through which OpenAI, Softbank, and Oracle will deploy large AI infrastructures.
Musk, isolated from the project after supporting Trump to the White House, did not take it well. "They don't have the money for that," he asserted, before criticizing the investment with Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, who seems to have followed the opposite path of Altman: from foe to potential ally, as the tech company has its own issues with the startup.