Featured Image Credit: SONNY TUMBELAKA / Contributor via Getty
Elon Musk says Sam Altman takes 'scamming to new level', claiming that he warned the public months ago.
The long-running grudge between Elon Musk and Sam Altman has flared up all over again, and this time the spark was a fresh legal headache landing on OpenAI's doorstep. The world's richest man wasted no time wading in, branding his former partner a serial 'scammer' and claiming he had called all of this months ago.
On Friday, Apple sued OpenAI, along with two former Apple employees who had jumped ship to the AI firm, accusing them of stealing company secrets to support OpenAI's push into hardware.
"Unsurprisingly, Apple's investigation has found a pattern by employees who depart for OpenAI of taking steps to evade the security processes intended to protect Apple's confidential information," the lawsuit stated. "OpenAI and its cohorts have been engaging in a coordinated pattern of misconduct at an institutional level as well."
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Meanwhile, OpenAI, which now stands to lose billions if the case goes against it, has denied everything, telling multiple outlets it 'has no interest in other companies' trade secrets.'
Musk took to X to respond in a series of posts.
"Scam Altman strikes again ...," he wrote, following it with "He takes scamming to a whole new level." The Tesla and SpaceX CEO also claimed that Altman 'might literally love scamming more than any human alive!'
The OpenAI CEO replied by taking aim at Musk's pitch to investors for satellite-based data centres. "Homeboy you're the one selling public market investors on short-term space datacenters," Altman wrote.
He takes scamming to a whole new level https://t.co/o6TMllhIMu
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 11, 2026
Musk then quipped back: "We start flying them next year. Maybe you can come see them if your parole officer approves. After stealing an open source AI charity, you then stole all of Apple's phone technology! Wow…"
The two men started OpenAI together in 2015, with Musk helping launch it as a not-for-profit before leaving in 2018 over its shift towards a for-profit model.
Having decided OpenAI was falling behind in the AI race, Musk offered to take control of the company and considered folding it into Tesla, having already invested tens of millions of dollars and pledged roughly $1 billion more over the following years. Altman and the founding team rejected the proposal, leading Musk to leave the board and cut off the funding he had promised.
He sued OpenAI in 2024, claiming it had broken their agreement and abandoned its founding mission. The case was rejected in May after a jury found he had missed the statutory deadline to file it.
