Musk Has a History of Acrimonious Breakups
Tom Brenner/For The Washington Post
Elon Musk and President Donald Trump on May 30 at the White House.
The relationship between President Donald Trump and billionaire and self-styled 'first buddy' Elon Musk ruptured this week, with the former allies trading insults and threats on social media. It's not the first time Musk has fallen out with his associates.
Take a look at Musk's past quarrels with business colleagues.
OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman
Musk helped found ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and was a major funder of the artificial intelligence project. But he split with his co-founders in 2018 and later sued to stop OpenAI's restructuring, accusing the company's executives of pivoting away from its nonprofit mission. He now has a competing AI start-up, xAI. OpenAI has countersued Musk for harassment and accused him of 'spreading false information about us.'
(The Washington Post has a content partnership with OpenAI.)
The feud has extended to personal jabs between Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. This year, Musk and a group of investors offered to buy OpenAI's assets for $97.4 billion, far below the company's $157 billion valuation. Altman shot down the bid in a social media post but offered to pay $9.74 billion for Musk's X, formerly Twitter. Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in 2022. 'Swindler,' Musk replied.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey
Musk bought Twitter in 2022, saying he wanted to promote free speech. He used a combination of his own wealth, bank loans and a long list of investors to complete the transaction, which was delayed by a months-long court battle, after he tried to back out of the deal and Twitter's board sued. Musk instituted steep cuts and overhauled the site's user experience. Though former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey initially endorsed Musk's takeover, he later reversed course and said Musk was not the right person for the job.
Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard
Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning incorporated Tesla in 2003, but Musk and two other employees are also considered co-founders under the terms of a later lawsuit settlement. Musk, an early investor in the electric vehicle maker, became chairman in 2004, years before the company sold its first car.
Eberhard was Tesla's first chief executive. The Musk-led board forced him to step down in 2007, and he left the company in 2008.
Musk has said Eberhard created a 'false narrative' that Musk invested in Tesla when it was an existing business and called him 'by far the worst person I've ever worked with in my entire career.' Eberhard had previously sued Musk for libel, slander and breach of contract; that case resulted in the settlement that acknowledged Musk as a co-founder.
PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel
A payments company co-founded by Musk merged with software company Confinity to create PayPal in 2000. His fellow PayPal co-founders orchestrated a coup against Musk later that year, ousting him as CEO while he was on his honeymoon and replacing him with Peter Thiel, according to Musk biographies. Among the points of tension: Musk wanted to broaden the company's ambitions and make the letter X more prominent in its branding, according to a Thiel biography.
Despite their clashes at PayPal, Thiel later invested in SpaceX, and the two men have become more aligned politically.
Former Zip2 CEO Richard Sorkin
Musk started online city guide creator Zip2 with his brother and a friend in the 1990s. But when Richard Sorkin was brought on as CEO, 'the outcome was a series of ego clashes that almost shut down Zip2,' according to a Salon article from the time. Zip2 was sold to Compaq Computer in 1999.
OpenAI, Tesla, X, Jupiter Intelligence (where Sorkin is CEO), Palantir (where Thiel is board chairman) and Block (where Dorsey is CEO) did not immediately respond to requests for comment or did not comment. Eberhard could not be reached.
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