After battling it out in court this week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made a surprising, if not full-throated, gesture to his rival, Elon Musk, on Saturday.
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OpenAI is planning a small celebration on May 5 for the release of its latest model, GPT-5.5. Altman shared an online form for those interested in attending to RSVP, and said Codex, OpenAI’s coding agent, would help the company choose people from the replies.
Registration closed quickly, and Altman later said that he’d plan bigger parties in the future.
It’s unlikely Musk threw his name into the ring for one of those limited invites, but Altman said on X that his erstwhile OpenAI cofounder “could come if he wants to.”
“The world needs more love,” Altman added.
The kindness came days after US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who is presiding over their legal fight, warned both tech executives to “control your propensity to use social media to make things worse outside this courtroom.”
Musk and Altman have been locked in an ideological battle for years.
The tech moguls cofounded OpenAI in 2015, but Musk left in 2018 after disagreements over the company’s direction and leadership, particularly around safety.
Since then, Musk has repeatedly criticized OpenAI — especially for what he has characterized as a shift away from an open-source nonprofit mission to one focused on commercialization and profit — while launching his own competing AI company, xAI.
Their rivalry has escalated from public jabs into serious legal disputes. Musk sued OpenAI, Altman, and other cofounders in March 2024 over the company’s direction. Musk says OpenAI and its other founders broke their original agreement.
In late April, the dispute moved into a high-profile federal trial in Oakland, where Musk and Altman are now testifying. The proceedings have already grown tense, with Musk clashing with OpenAI’s lawyer before the judge stepped in.
