Big-name water-battle: Musk mocks Altman for “stealing Apple after stealing OpenAI”; Altman fires back: SpaceX only scalps retail investors

Musk and Sam Altman clashed on X: Musk accused Altman of “upgrading” his “theft,” stealing from an “open-source” nonprofit again and then “stealing” Apple technology, while Altman fired back at Musk for pitching space data centers to retail investors in the stock market.
(Background: Sun Yuzhi doesn’t agree with Musk’s space data centers—launching rockets and maintaining the costs aren’t worth it, plus there’s also communication latency.)
(Additional context: Apple is suing OpenAI over alleged employee poaching and stealing confidential information—interview and code-design documents, not returning laptops after resignation, downloading thousands of pages..)

In the past, Musk and Sam Altman’s back-and-forth usually stopped at name-calling, with both sides retreating afterward. This time, they’re not playing along anymore—both sides have directly torn the mask off each other. The opening salvo came from Musk: in response to the recent accusation by Apple that OpenAI stole company secrets, he first launched an attack against Altman, accusing him of “fraud upgrading to a whole new level.”

He takes scamming to a whole new level https://t.co/o6TMllhIMu

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 11, 2026

Space, phones, nonprofits—three lines opened at once

The two have long been unable to stand each other, but this time Altman didn’t dodge. He shot back with: “homeboy you’re the one selling public market investors on short-term space datacenters”. In plain terms, the orbital data centers Musk is promoting are basically a big slice of pie drawn for retail investors.

He also flexed his muscles, saying OpenAI’s latest model “5.6 Sol” is currently the best model in the world, and added that Musk is “obsessed” with him—implying that this whole series of attacks is essentially emotional venting from being unable to take a loss, not rational business analysis.

We start flying them next year. Maybe you can come see them if your parole officer approves.

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

What do you plan for an encore? That’s tough to beat.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 11, 2026

Of course, Musk wouldn’t stop here. He first announced that SpaceX’s AI1 satellites will be tested in flight next year, using a specific timeline to counter the “drawing big pies” accusation. Even harsher: he mocked Altman for first “stealing” an open-source AI nonprofit, and now running off to “steal” Apple’s phone technology—then asked what he plans to steal next.

The argument is about pride; the fight is for compute

If you break down this shouting match, it’s really three fronts launching at the same time, with each side betting real money on the outcome.

The first front is the compute-route battle. Musk’s logic is straightforward: Earth’s energy and cooling are the ceiling. The bigger the data centers you build, the more pressure the power grid and cooling systems face. “Space AI is obviously the only way to scale,” he argued. He even estimated that within two to three years, space would be the lowest-cost place for compute for generative AI, worth burning money to secure a position early.

Altman, however, doesn’t buy it. He said directly that putting large data centers into orbit “is absurd.” Launch costs, failure rates, and maintenance difficulty are all far higher than on the ground. It won’t be able to scale within the next ten years either. That turns Musk’s long-term vision into a sales pitch for short-term speculation, and it conveniently shifts the target toward public-market investors who have bought into Musk’s narrative.

The second front shifts the fight to the ground. Apple has already formally sued OpenAI, accusing it of obtaining hardware trade secrets related to Apple’s consumer device plans through interviews and poaching former employees.

The third front is a revisit of old accounts. Earlier this April, Musk sued OpenAI, Altman, and Brockman in federal court in Oakland, California. He alleged that when the company was founded in 2015, it promised to be “permanently nonprofit.” He says he therefore invested $38 million, and now that OpenAI has turned profit-seeking, it amounts to “commercial plunder” of nonprofit assets—and he wants Altman to step down.