Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have stepped up their public feud as Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI gave the dispute a new edge. The spat unfolded in the same week that OpenAI and SpaceXAI rolled out new flagship models.
Musk and Altman trade barbs on X
According to the report, Musk wrote on X on July 11 that Altman had taken “fraud to a whole new level,” aiming his criticism at OpenAI’s business conduct toward users and customers.
Altman reposted Musk’s message and answered: “Buddy, you’re the one selling public market investors on short-term space data centers.”
Musk responded by saying those space data centers would “start flying next year,” then added a jab that Altman could visit if his “parole officer” approved it.
Musk then escalated further, saying Altman had “first stolen an open-source AI charity, then stolen all of Apple’s phone technology,” before asking: “What are you going to do next? That will be hard to top.”
Apple lawsuit becomes part of the dispute
The report links Musk’s reference to “Apple technology” to Apple’s recent lawsuit against OpenAI.
As cited in the source material, Apple filed the case on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Apple accused OpenAI of intentionally encouraging Apple employees to leak information tied to unreleased products, including components, drawings and other materials, to support its own hardware development plans.
Apple asked the court to order OpenAI to stop the conduct immediately, destroy all proprietary materials involved in the case and redesign upcoming products so they do not contain any Apple technology.
OpenAI said: “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets and remain focused on building innovative technology.”
The lawsuit could also affect the two companies’ existing relationship. The report said OpenAI has long provided key technical support for Apple Intelligence and Siri, and that the partnership was formally announced two years ago at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference.
GPT-5.6 and Grok 4.5 launch in the same week
OpenAI and SpaceXAI also released their latest flagship models this week, GPT-5.6 and Grok 4.5. Both are positioned as AI agents, meaning models designed to handle multi-step tasks on their own.
Based on the report’s product comparison, GPT-5.6 stands out in broad reasoning, business workflows and cybersecurity. Grok 4.5 is described as more efficient in autonomous coding and developer workflows, with lower usage costs than GPT-5.6.
Still, the report said OpenAI’s model remains ahead of Grok in some areas, including abstract reasoning.
For investors and enterprise users, the difference in positioning points to different use cases. Companies looking for broader reasoning ability may lean toward GPT-5.6, while developers focused on cost efficiency and code automation may prefer Grok 4.5.