Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Anthropic: the AI Fights Explained

As the summer temperatures rise, tech tempers flare.

Sam Altman is back to his old ways: openly feuding with Elon Musk and taking jabs at Anthropic once again, to the shock of no one.

With Altman and Musk’s courtroom dispute wrapped up (Musk lost but vowed to appeal), the dueling AI leaders are now dragging each other online over data privacy and an Apple legal battle.

The OpenAI CEO has also poked at Anthropic, his primary competitor, run by Dario Amodei. Altman and Amodei were once colleagues; now, they avoid holding hands.

Altman hasn’t called a rival CEO a “pusher” or a “grotsky little byotch” yet. Still, a Burn Book is forming under his fingertips — and we decoded it for you.

Round One: Sam Altman vs Elon Musk

Elon Musk threw the first punch last Friday.

Apple sued OpenAI that day, alleging that the AI lab stole trade secrets to build its upcoming hardware device. Musk replied to posts about the suit with exclamation points, the word “wow,” and a quick reaction: “Sounds pretty bad.”

He ramped up on Saturday, calling the OpenAI CEO “Scam Altman,” a favorite phrase of his.

The digs kept coming throughout the day. Altman took scamming “to a whole new level,” Musk wrote, and might love scamming “more than any human alive!”

Altman responded in his typical, lower-case fashion: “homeboy you’re the one sellling public market investors on short-term space datacenters.”

Note the term of endearment (or lack thereof): “homeboy.” Note the typo: “sellling.” Note the lack of punctuation.

Three minutes later, Altman fired off another. This time, he used the feud as an opportunity to promote his product, writing that the most reliable benchmark for GPT-5.6 Sol’s success “is that elon is obsessed with me again.” (Again, no capitalization.)

Musk responded to Altman’s space data center skepticism a few hours later with a zinger.

“We start flying them next year. Maybe you can come see them if your parole officer approves,” Musk wrote.

In the same post, Musk took another shot at Altman by referencing their messy breakup from almost a decade ago.

“After stealing an open source AI charity, you then stole all of Apple’s phone technology!” he wrote. “Wow.”

For the record, Altman doesn’t have a parole officer. OpenAI disputes Apple’s allegations stating it is “not aware of any evidence that this complaint has merit.”

OpenAI and SpaceX did not respond to Business Insider’s requests for comment.

After Saturday’s brawl, Altman wasn’t done. He took one last stab at Musk on Tuesday, reposting some data privacy concerns about SpaceXAI.

“Concerning,” he wrote.

And yet, the enemies could find some common ground.

Both Musk and Altman posted approving messages about an AI safety essay published Tuesday by Google DeepMind’s CEO Demis Hassabis.

Round Two: Sam Altman vs Anthropic

Throughout the Musk mess, Altman continued to kick at his No. 1 opponent: Anthropic.

Last Thursday, Anthropic released an eyebrow-raising ad saying there was “hope in hard questions.” Those questions include: what will humans do when AI takes over all the jobs? And why do we even have to have AI? The leading image is of a house on fire; it’s an AI doomer’s dream.

Altman clowned the ad on Monday, saying that he “thought this was satire” posted from a fake account.

He also put words in Anthropic’s mouth: “Hard questions are great but only if we deem you worthy enough to not silently downgrade you, or even get access at all.”

He appeared to reference how Anthropic quietly rejected or altered some Fable 5 prompts in its initial launch. The company has since made these safeguards more visible.

Earlier that day, he laughed at an X user who called the use of Anthropic’s Fable 5 an unhealthy situationship. Since its release, Anthropic has rolled back and re-deployed the model and lifted and lowered guardrails, to the frustration of some users. (In typical Altman fashion, he “lol’d.”)

Altman also got philosophical. He reposted a reply to a criticism of Amodei that quoted C.S. Lewis.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive,” the post read.

It’s similar to criticisms other AI leaders have shared: that Anthropic warns of AI’s safety concerns while claiming only its AI can fix it.

And then, the vague-post of all vague-posts.

“Come for the best model, stay because we don’t treat you with contempt,” Altman wrote on Monday, without specifying which AI rival he was taking a shot at.

Amodei seems to be steering clear of the drama. As of Wednesday evening, he hadn’t responded, nor has he updated his X account in over a month.

Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment.