A decade-old rivalry between X owner, Elon Musk, and OpenAI boss, Sam Altman, refuses to die down, now that Musk has called Altman a “liar” after the latter claimed Musk used his platform to “benefit himself and his own companies”.
In his claims, Musk had also threatened Apple with legal action over claims it had made it “impossible” for apps to compete with OpenAI in its App Store. Musk took aim at Apple in a post on X later, asking the firm why it would not promote X – or its AI app Grok – in the “Must Have” section of the App Store.
“X is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps,” he said in a post now pinned to his X profile.
The two billionaires, who had, at one point, co-founded OpenAI, parted ways and turned into fierce competitors. Their feud has since comprised a slew of lawsuits, email dumps, and social media digs, such as the most recent.
In June 2024, Apple had announced a partnership with ChatGPT, but there is no evidence that Apple favours one app over the other. Several other rival AI apps such as Perplexity and DeepSeek have since topped the App Store chats.
Currently, ChatGPT is the most downloaded free app in the UK, the next being Grok, and X not even being in the top 40.
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Musk has also claimed OpenAI abandoned its principles under Altman’s leadership, which he had used to found the app in 2015. OpenAI was created with the intention of building artificial general intelligence (AGI) – AI that can perform any task that a human being is capable of. However, it claimed to make its technology open-source to “benefit humanity”.
From a not-for-profit company, it then had a for-profit arm which Musk felt was antithetical to its original mission. In a lawsuit filed in March of 2024, Musk argued that the firm had started focusing on “maximising profits” for its major investor, Microsoft.
He later dropped his lawsuit, but not before OpenAI filed a counter-suit against him in April, claiming the X owner had engaged “non-stop” in “bad faith tactics” to try and slow down the company’s AI development. OpenAI then went on to claim that Musk is motivated by his “own agenda”.
In February, Musk also made a bid to buy the company for $100 billion, a bid that was rejected by OpenAI’s board.
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