How Elon Musk and Sam Altman went from besties to bitter rivals

Key points

• In this article GOOGL Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNT A combination photo shows CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman (L) on April 28, 2026 and Elon Musk on April 29, 2026 during the trial in Elon Musk's lawsuit over OpenAI for-profit conversion at a federal courthouse in Oakland, California, U.S.
• Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters In December 2015, Elon Musk and Sam Altman sat together at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in San Francisco for an interview, publicly touting their new partnership as co-chairs of a fledgling artificial intelligence research lab.
• Musk was a multibillionaire due to his stake in Tesla, which had gone public five years earlier, and Altman was running famed startup incubator Y Combinator.
• The pair had been working closely that year on an AI initiative they hoped would prevent Google from establishing monopoly control over the powerful technology.
• Their project, a nonprofit, was called OpenAI....