Last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted a plausibly deniable barb at the Tesla brand — and, by extension, Tesla CEO Elon Musk — including some highly unflattering receipts.
Altman's shot across the bow predictably got under Musk's skin, according to Business Insider.
Back up the Cybertruck for a moment here: Altman and Musk were, at one time, fairly close friends and, critically, collaborators in OpenAI's early days.
In 2018, the CEOs had a falling out over the direction of OpenAI. Specifically, Altman later asserted Musk sought to "merge" the firm with Tesla, and Altman demurred. Musk, meanwhile, has accused Altman of abandoning OpenAI's original nonprofit mission.
Since then, they've feuded, often in public view, and Musk started his own AI company, xAI, which runs Grok, the AI within X, formerly Twitter.
In August, as Tesla contended with a global sales decline, Altman discussed OpenAI's investment in a competitor's autonomous driving technology, Applied Intuition, taking aim at one of Musk's biggest challenges as the electric vehicle manufacturer's CEO.
Those remarks coincided with Tesla's limited, chaotic debut of its long-awaited robotaxis in Austin, Texas. Not long after that, Musk's xAI filed suit against OpenAI, accusing the latter of poaching AI talent from X.
Altman and Musk have vastly different public personas, and when Altman subtweeted Musk on Oct. 30, he likely knew an angry, high-profile response was all but guaranteed.
He got one.
On Nov. 1, less than a day after Altman baited his hook, Musk bit.
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The government 🏛️ "And you forgot to mention act 4, where this issue was fixed and you received a refund within 24 hours," Tesla's CEO angrily replied. "But that is in your nature."
Musk's response to Altman's story, as it was presented, lacked many important details, such as when Altman received the refund, what triggered it, and whether it was provided due to the flurry of media attention generated by Altman's tweet.
In part, Altman's complaint held that the email address he used to request the refund "bounced back," and if his tweeted complaint facilitated the refund, it was plausible that Altman was unaware it had been issued.
Many — perhaps most — prospective Tesla drivers remain unaware of the underlying conflict between the dueling CEOs.
As such, watching Musk berate a customer — albeit a high-profile customer with plenty of resources — for requesting a refund on a deposit made the better part of a decade ago could very easily dissuade drivers from making their next car an EV with Tesla, especially in preorder form, if made to feel the process is complicated in some way.
The Tesla Roadster was announced eight years ago, in November 2017, and it would be hard to paint Altman's ask as unreasonable. According to Business Insider, Musk continued to tout the unreleased Roadster during a recent appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast.
"If you took all the James Bond cars and combined them, it's crazier than that," Musk promised.
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