Sam Altman and Elon Musk Are Feuding Over the Tesla Roadster

In the first half of this year, a headline on the EV news site Electrek asked a question raised by many automotive enthusiasts: “Is the Tesla Roadster ever going to be made?” The article, by Fred Lambert, noted that the Roadster’s prototype debuted eight years ago, with no production model in sight. A followup article by Lambert referred to perpetual Roadster delays as “a running gag in the Tesla community” — though the article also pointed to some signs for optimism.

One high-profile figure who seems to have reached the end of his rope with respect to the Roadster delays is OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. In a post on X, Altman included a screenshot of the confirmation Tesla sent him in 2018, when he made a $45,000 deposit for a Roadster. That was followed by images of two other emails: his request to get a refund for his deposit and an error message indicating that the email that Altman had contacted was no longer in service.

“I really was excited for the car! And I understand delays,” he wrote in a follow-up post. “But 7.5 years has felt like a long time to wait.”

If you saw this and predicted that Elon Musk would reply, you would be correct. Musk’s first salvo referenced his ongoing clash with Altman over the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation. “You stole a non-profit,” Musk wrote in response to Altman’s post. Musk followed that up with another dig at Altman, implying that his version of events was not exactly complete.

“And you forgot to mention act 4, where this issue was fixed and you received a refund within 24 hours,” Musk wrote. “But that is in your nature.”

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Altman has since pushed back. “i helped turn the thing you left for dead into what should be the largest non-profit ever,” he wrote. “you know as well as anyone a structure like what openai has now is required to make that happen.” He also tried to strike a conciliatory tone. “now you have a great AI company and so do we,” he added. “can’t we all just move on?”

Musk has yet to respond to Altman’s posts directly, but did respond to another account that posted a screenshot of Altman’s latest post. “For some reason, I don’t trust him,” Musk wrote, pointing to a deposition that suggested internal conflicts within OpenAI. Will the feud continue from here? Will a production Roadster ever be available for sale? We’ll see if this high-profile conflict continues or fades into the background for now.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…