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Sam Altman says he can't wait to get Elon Musk under oath

Sam Altman (left) and Elon Musk (right)
Sam Altman said he's really excited to get Elon Musk under oath. Getty Images
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Sam Altman is pumped to take on Elon Musk in court.

"Really excited to get Elon under oath in a few months, Christmas in April!" the OpenAI CEO said in a Tuesday evening X post.

He also reposted his chief security officer Jason Kwon's X post, with the caption "concerning."

The post contained screenshots of a court filing from OpenAI's attorneys, which said that Musk preferred using messaging apps like Signal or XChat with message retention settings of a week or less.

Altman and Musk took their yearslong public feud to the next level in 2024. Musk, who is Tesla and SpaceX's CEO, launched a lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman in February 2024, accusing Altman of jeopardizing its nonprofit mission.

Musk said that he contributed $38 million to OpenAI, thinking it would remain a nonprofit. He was one of the company's founders, along with Altman, PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel, and others.

Despite OpenAI's attorneys' attempts to have the case thrown out, a California judge said in a January hearing that there was enough evidence to go to trial, which is set for April.

The billionaire duo have been trading barbs on social media. Musk attacked OpenAI's ChatGPT on January 20, writing "Don't let your loved ones use ChatGPT." He was responding to an X post alleging that the chatbot has been linked to multiple deaths since 2022.

Altman responded to Musk's post, slamming Tesla's Autopilot system as unsafe, and questioning xAI's Grok chatbot. Grok has faced criticism from governments in several countries after reports of Grok users uploading pictures of women and minors and asking the chatbot to undress them.

Representatives for Musk and Altman did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

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Aditi Bharade
Aditi Bharade
Aditi is a news reporter at Business Insider’s Singapore bureau. She covers hustle culture and the future of work, focusing on how AI and technology are reshaping jobs, careers, and workplaces.She previously worked for The Straits Times, where she wrote breaking news stories for the Singapore desk. She studied communications and business at Nanyang Technological University.