Musk’s OpenAI takeover bid may come as a surprise to some, but the AI industry’s power struggle has been years in the making.
Musk vs Altman—it is the feud of the year but it didn’t start in 2025. Despite Musk’s role in establishing OpenAI, he has long voiced his opinions against the platform and discouraged its progress repeatedly. While OpenAI’s unfettered growth has rightfully been questioned by other major players and concerned experts in the field, Musk’s issues with the organization paint a very confusing picture, especially in recent months.
The OpenAI feud timeline has become more complicated this year with Musk, along with a group of investors, making an unsolicited offer of $97.4 billion to acquire OpenAI. Altman promptly rejected the offer without a second thought, but Musk has not been deterred. He will likely continue to use his biggest strength—his wealth—to try and gain control over OpenAI.
The Musk vs Altman showdown adds an additional layer of drama to the AI race. (Left: Altman during the keynote at the OpenAI DevDay; Right: Musk discussing making humans a multi-planetary species)
Musk vs Altman Explained: The OpenAI Feud Timeline Grows More Complicated
Billionaires have nothing but time and money on their hands to duke it out on a larger scale than we can comprehend. Such is the case with the Musk vs Altman feud, and the timeline of how the two acquaintances have now grown apart. You would think that Musk’s own GroxAI platform and performance would keep him focused on its growth and future, however, the tech tycoon has taken offense to the direction Altman has elected to turn to with his OpenAI platform.
The AI industry’s power struggle has taken many forms over the last 3 years, particularly following OpenAI’s unparalleled success in the area. Ever since, many other major players have either borrowed and built on its technology or opted to create LLMs and AIs of their own, however, OpenAI’s ChatGPT still remains one of the top choices for consumers and businesses alike.
We haven’t seen real evidence of Grok holding its own against competitors other than xAI’s own data, and the platform has remained a niche service for Twitter/X users. So is that what prompted Musk’s OpenAI takeover bid? Not necessarily. Let’s look at the OpenAI feud timeline to understand what happened.
2015
Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and several other investors together set up the non-profit research organization OpenAI, headquartered in San Francisco, California. The organization had a mission to “advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.”
2017
The OpenAI team began to consider turning into a for-profit entity in order to acquire the capital it needed to continue on its mission to build the Artificial general intelligence (AGI) they had in mind. While Musk agreed that this would be a necessary move, the decision-makers could not settle on the terms and conditions of how things needed to change around the organization. This is where the Musk vs Altman story likely begins.
According to OpenAI, Musk withheld funding for the team during the negotiations of the terms of becoming a for-profit entity, forcing Reid Hoffman, another investor, to fill in and pay for the salaries and operations.
2018
Musk leaves OpenAI. Initially, this was described as a pre-emptive measure to prevent Musk from facing conflicts with his other growing businesses, but the story later changed. It was later explained that Musk left after the organization refused to let him gain more than 50% equity in the business.
“Elon soon chose to leave OpenAI, saying that our probability of success was 0 and that he planned to build an AGI competitor within Tesla,” the company explains, adding that when Musk left he was supportive of the company’s attempts to raise billions of dollars for its mission.
July 12, 2023
The OpenAI ownership conflict was temporarily put aside as Musk launched his own AI company. X.AI Corp was founded on March 9, 2023, in Nevada, and was officially announced in July.
After having voiced concerns over unmonitored AI growth and its potential for “civilizational destruction,” Musk took matters into his own hands to understand the “true nature of the universe.” His xAI team released the Grok AI chatbot in November 2023 and it was made available to Twitter/X users to experiment with and explore.
OpenAI went through its own struggles in 2023, when the board ousted CEO Altman briefly and then had to return him to the helm and exit the company themselves. It was a chaotic end to the year.
March 2024
The Musk vs Altman battle took a legal turn early in 2024 when Musk decided to sue OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, for abandoning the original mission of the startup to develop AI for humanity. The lawsuit was filed in California Superior Court in San Francisco, and it alleged that a breach of contract had occurred as the organization had deviated from its original non-profit mission for money.
The lawsuit was intended to force OpenAI to hand over its research to the public space and prevent the business from using it for financial gains, whether that was for Microsoft or another entity. Musk then withdrew the lawsuit later that year.
August 2024
That wasn’t the end of legal action in the Musk-OpenAI feud timeline. The billionaire filed another lawsuit in August with the same purpose of halting OpenAI’s for-profit ambitions.
Shady. The mask is really coming off. pic.twitter.com/3EcMVX1kgU
— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) October 2, 2024
BREAKING:
Elon Musk just filed an injunction to stop OpenAI from going full for-profit
Today is ChatGPT’s birthday LMFAOOO pic.twitter.com/loqtrL2obK
— NIK (@ns123abc) November 30, 2024
January 2025
After OpenAI joined the $500 billion Stargate initiative, Musk came out to criticize Altman’s presence in Trump’s venture. He also called Altman a “swindler” and a “liar,” making the Musk vs Altman battle a personal one rather than one linked to OpenAI’s success in the AI field. Altman also bit back on Twitter/X indirectly, “Just one more mean tweet and then maybe you’ll love yourself….”
just one more mean tweet and then maybe you’ll love yourself…
— Sam Altman (@sama) January 23, 2025
Altman is not without his share of controversies and his callous leadership of OpenAI as well as accusations in his personal life have not painted a very good picture. Musk may be flamboyant but he isn’t wrong about Altman’s willingness to switch sides for funding or making AI progress without carefully considering the consequences first.
February 10, 2025
Musk, with a group of investors, made a $97.4 billion bid to acquire OpenAI’s nonprofit arm. “It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was,” he said to the Wall Street Journal. He has offered to meet any bid made by other investors, which will make it difficult to reject Musk’s offer repeatedly without sufficient cause to do so.
Doing his own part to keep the OpenAI feud timeline going, Altman also rejected the offer immediately, offering to buy Twitter/X back from Musk. “No thank you but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want,” he stated. The two-part blow first identified the platform as Twitter and also acknowledged the fact that Musk bought the platform for $44 billion and has fallen in value ever since.
Musk’s response? Calling Altman a “Swindler.” He also reposted tweets by captioning them “Scam Altman” so things are really heating up in the world of technology.
no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want
— Sam Altman (@sama) February 10, 2025
Scam Altman
pic.twitter.com/j9EXIqBZ8u— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2025
Musk vs Altman: What’s Next?
The Musk vs Altman debacle is far from over. OpenAI is still one of the biggest, most widely known AI businesses across the globe, and when users turn to AI, they typically turn first to ChatGPT. Grok AI, while it has leveled up considerably in recent times, remains a niche product most used by Twitter/X members. This dynamic is unlikely to change in the coming months, but Musk has the money and influence to buy out some degree of Altman’s control over OpenAI.
Will Musk’s OpenAI takeover bid be successful? That remains to be seen. Musk has been at the center of many controversies in the few short months we’ve had in 2025, the oddest of which have been the accusations that he has been lying about how good he is at video games like Path of Exile 2 and Diablo IV. You cannot make this stuff up.
Despite his loyal band of supporters, some of Musk’s business ventures have taken a hit in recent months, whether you look at the SpaceX launches or the falling stocks of Tesla. This could change soon with the influence he has over government policy, so we’ll keep our eyes peeled to see what happens next.
The OpenAI ownership conflict has existed since the early days of the company, but things are seriously ramping up right now. What do you think will happen next? Let us know. For more insight into the world of technology and the many power players who lead the way, subscribe to Technowize.
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