Musk’s rivals fear he will target them with his new power
Musk’s scorched-earth tactics send waves of concern through his lengthy list of business rivals, with OpenAI’s Sam Altman ranking high on the billionaire’s enemy roll, as car companies and tech giants scramble for allies in the incoming Trump administration.
As the summer drew to a close, Sam Altman thought his relationship with his OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk was in a good place.
Musk had sued him earlier in the year for allegedly betraying OpenAI’s nonprofit mission, but withdrew the suit a few months after the two spent part of an evening huddled together around a fire pit on the sidelines of a March technology conference in Big Sky, Mont. Their amicable chat ended in a hug, according to people at the conference.
Even after Musk refiled the suit in August, the long-volatile relationship seemed manageable. After all, Musk had a long track record of picking fights then moving on.
Then came Donald Trump’s electoral victory and Musk’s transformation into what some describe as a shadow president. After ploughing $200 million into Trump’s campaign, Musk dubbed himself on X as the incoming president’s “First Buddy.” Since the election, people close to Musk have said he despises Altman. Musk has cranked up the heat on their feud, filing an expanded version of his lawsuit calling OpenAI a “market-paralyzing gorgon.” Musk also pinned his personal correspondence with Altman to his X account and gave Altman his own Trump-style nickname on X: “Swindly Sam.” Altman, a registered Democrat who chose not to endorse a candidate in this election, felt blindsided, a person familiar with his thinking said.
Swindly Sam is at it again … https://t.co/g86nws9g9h
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 16, 2024
Musk’s scorched-earth tactics have sent waves of concern through his lengthy list of business rivals, who over the years have included Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. They have watched him ascend to an unprecedented level of power for a private citizen while continuing to nurse his private business grievances.
The richest man in the world is poised to have significant influence not only over how his six companies, including X, Tesla and SpaceX, interact with the federal government -- SpaceX has accumulated more than $15 billion in federal contracts over the last decade -- but also over how the new administration treats his rivals.
Musk’s influence with Trump extends far beyond the Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE,” the newly created advisory body that he will co-lead with Vivek Ramaswamy with the goal of slashing federal headcount and regulations. He has rarely left Trump’s side since the election, sleeping at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and informal MAGA headquarters in Palm Beach, Fla.
He has joined Trump’s calls with everyone from Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and publicly pushed for Trump cabinet picks for agencies that will impact his companies, like Brendan Carr to lead the Federal Communications Commission.
At Mar-a-Lago, people seeking to bring something to the president-elect’s attention often go through Musk to do it. The CEO of TikTok has been talking to him about the incoming administration and tech policy.
But that puts personal rivals like Altman in an unenviable position. “It’s known that he’s PNG,” or persona non grata, said one person close to the Trump family, speaking of Altman. The new administration will hold huge sway over the regulation of the nascent AI sector, including over Musk’s own rival AI company, xAI.
Altman has been in contact with friends and business associates within Trump’s circle, including Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law; and Josh Kushner, his brother and the owner of the venture-capital firm Thrive Capital that is a major investor in OpenAI. Not much has worked so far. Some Altman contacts have been hesitant to pass on his entreaties, knowing how unwelcome they would be to Musk.
In recent weeks, Altman asked a mutual friend to arrange a meeting with Howard Lutnick, co-chair of the president-elect’s transition team, people familiar with the meeting said. Lutnick ranks as one of Trump’s closest advisers, and is also close to Musk. At a meeting in Palm Beach, Altman touted the investments OpenAI intends to make in the US by building large data centres and making lots of hires, some of the people said.
Lutnick has since become Trump’s pick to lead the Commerce Department, which oversees AI regulation.
A number of top executives who compete with Musk’s companies are hesitant to speak out against him publicly for fear of alienating him at a time when his power has found unmatched heights. People who have worked with Musk say he draws energy from the idea of having enemies.
Musk didn’t respond to requests for comment. He has said on X that he hasn’t asked Trump for any favours or has been offered any.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump transition, said: “President Trump will serve ALL Americans, even those who did not vote for him in the election. He will unify the country through success.”
My list of enemies
Trump rode to the White House on promises to use federal power to exact “retribution” against his political enemies. Over his career, Musk has shown a similar taste for revenge, with a long list of perceived foes he has gone after through the courts and with his 200 million followers on X.
Sometimes I think my list of enemies is too short, so …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2022
“Sometimes I think my list of enemies is too short,” he once tweeted, later following up with this: “There is a large graveyard filled with my enemies. I do not wish to add to it, but will if given no choice.” Bill Gates got on the enemies list when he placed a short bet on Tesla’s stock, wagering that a surplus in electric cars would drive the price of Musk’s car company down. Musk was so enraged that he posted an unflattering photo of Gates on X next to a pregnant man emoji, writing, “in case u need to lose a boner fast.” “Once he heard I’d shorted the stock, he was super mean to me,” Gates told Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson. “But he’s super mean to so many people, so you can’t take it too personally.”
He also targeted advertisers for pulling money from X after he purchased the platform in 2022. Some were boycotting because of a post that was perceived as antisemitic. “Go f -- yourself. Is that clear?” he said at a New York Times event. “Don’t advertise,” he went on, before zeroing in on Disney CEO Bob Iger, who had spoken earlier and had been among the large advertisers to pause spending.
He followed up by suing a coalition of advertisers in August, alleging the ad boycott was illegal, claiming on X: “We tried peace for 2 years, now it is war.” The coalition denied wrongdoing but disbanded a brand-safety initiative that had been in Musk’s crosshairs.
Last year, he challenged Mark Zuckerberg to a cage match, a mixed martial arts competition, after the Facebook co-founder’s company Meta introduced Threads, a platform to rival Musk’s X. The two went after each other for months, calling each other names, but the idea seemed to wane after Musk said he might need surgery. Musk reupped the rivalry in May, as he was throwing his weight into the Trump campaign. “I’ve offered to fight him any place, any time, any rules, but all I hear is crickets,” he wrote on X.
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos has also been a long-running foe. The two men have jostled for first place on the Forbes billionaires list over the years, with Musk now on top with roughly $330 billion compared with Bezos’ $223 billion, but they also compete over space launches.
In 2021, Bezos’ space company Blue Origin filed a protest over SpaceX’s $2.9 billion contract with NASA to develop a lander for the agency’s return to the moon. Musk responded to a story about it on X, saying “Can’t get it up (to orbit) lol.” Musk also gave Bezos’ rocket company a new nickname, “Sue Origin,” after the company petitioned the FAA to limit SpaceX launches at some sites over environmental concerns.
Can’t get it up (to orbit) lol
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2021
The Trump effect
Some worry that Musk’s new proximity to Trump could super-size those rivalries in ways that favour the tech mogul.
Rep. Adam Smith (D., Wash.), ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, said in an interview that Musk’s greater power and ties to Trump could suppress competition. “It just makes me nervous in general, the way I have seen Trump make decisions...and certainly Musk as well. Musk clearly has influence now.” SpaceX is currently trying to get approval from NASA and the Space Force for a large number of launches for its Starship rocket at Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center. Rivals including Boeing are worried that if SpaceX succeeds, it might crowd out their ability to use the sites.
Car company officials and advisers say they are closely following how the incoming Trump administration could favour Tesla. Musk said he supports cancelling the $7,500 federal credit on EV purchases, which he has said will hurt Tesla but hurt its competitors more. Other Trump policies, such as proposed tariffs on Mexico, could also harm Tesla’s competitors, many of which manufacture cars in Mexico to export to the US.
Executives at Meta’s Facebook and Alphabet’s Google are concerned that Musk could push to regulate their companies more aggressively, such as by putting additional antitrust attention on them, people familiar with the companies said.
Some of Musk’s rivals are unfortunate enough to have also tangled with Trump in the past. The incoming president has called Zuckerberg “Zuckerschmuck” and Facebook an “Enemy of the People,” and referred to Bezos as “Jeff Bozo” and called Amazon a monopoly.
Zuckerberg, whose company suspended Trump’s account over Jan. 6, declined to endorse a candidate this cycle. And in October, Bezos pulled a Washington Post endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president. Both would later congratulate Trump. Zuckerberg recently met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, a person familiar with the gathering said.
Musk still went after Bezos on X soon after the election. “Just learned tonight at Mar-a-Lago that Jeff Bezos was telling everyone that @realDonaldTrump would lose for sure, so they should sell all their Tesla and SpaceX stock” adding a laughing hand-over-mouth emoji. Bezos responded to the post saying it wasn’t true.
Just learned tonight at Mar-a-Lago that Jeff Bezos was telling everyone that @realDonaldTrump would lose for sure, so they should sell all their Tesla and SpaceX stock ðŸ¤
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 21, 2024
As Trump’s transition pushes forward, Musk’s competitors are rushing to hire lobbying firms with ties to the president-elect, hoping to find a back channel to Trump’s inner circle and repair their relationship with him and the tech mogul. They have gone through people and companies with ties to Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles as well as people close to Donald Trump Jr., some public-policy executives said.
Others have taken a public approach toward peace. Billionaire Mark Cuban, who was a surrogate for Vice President Kamala Harris, sparred with Musk often during the campaign, but congratulated both Trump and Musk on X after Trump’s victory. “You won fair and square,” he wrote.
But Cuban wouldn’t say when asked by the Journal how he would work with Musk and Trump post-election. “I’ll pass. I’m not talking politics at all,” Cuban wrote in an email.
‘Swindly Sam’
Musk’s rivalry with Altman is probably the most intense these days. Musk and Altman co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit counterweight to Google with a mission to develop artificial general intelligence, or AGI, for the benefit of humanity. But as fundraising pressures for the company intensified, Altman and his other co-founders rejected Musk’s bid to take control of the company in 2017, even as he was its primary funder. Musk left the OpenAI board in 2018, and soon after it launched a for-profit arm and took a major investment from Microsoft.
“I don’t trust OpenAI. I don’t trust Sam Altman. And I don’t think we ought to have the most powerful AI in the world controlled by someone who is not trustworthy,” Musk told Tucker Carlson in an October interview.
In his lawsuit, Musk alleges that Altman tricked him into funding OpenAI as a nonprofit, while intending to turn it into a traditional for-profit company all along in a betrayal of its nonprofit mission. OpenAI has since announced that it plans to transition to a for-profit company.
OpenAI has called the lawsuit “baseless.” After leaving OpenAI, Musk founded a rival AI company, xAI.
Musk’s spot at the political table could end up favouring xAI over Altman’s OpenAI at a time when some are urging the federal government to put its thumb on the scale.
Altman has long been one of the most prominent voices calling for the government to fund AI development. He tried to persuade the US to back OpenAI’s efforts in its early days without success.
Before the election, OpenAI’s policy team had met with both the Trump and Harris campaigns and shared their vision of a “Manhattan Project” for investing in AI infrastructure.
“We had made clear, well before the election, that we really do see this as a technology that transcends politics, given how important it is,” said Chris Lehane, vice president of global policy at OpenAI. “Everyone who’s an American wants to make sure America beats China on this, and that means OpenAI needs to be in the middle of those conversations.” Trump is considering appointing an “AI czar” who would have influence over not just AI safety, but also infrastructure and US competitiveness against China.
Unlike some of Musk’s other foes, Altman has publicly punched back at Musk since the election, despite his rising power.
After Musk filed the updated lawsuit on November 15, Altman posted screenshots on X of xAI’s chatbot, Grok, appearing to say that Harris would be a better president than Trump, with Altman writing, “which one is supposed to be the left-wing propaganda machine again?” When another X user posted screenshots showing that Grok actually gave two answers to who would be the best president, Trump and Harris, Musk reposted the shots, and wrote, “Swindly Sam is at it again...” Altman has taken care not to alienate the incoming president. The morning of Trump’s victory, Altman posted his congratulations on X. Breaking his typical all-lowercase style in deference to the new leader of the free world, he wrote “congrats to President Trump. i wish for his huge success in the job.” Musk has said he expects his new post with Trump to create even more enemies in the coming months.
“Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lots of enemies & compensation is zero,” Musk posted on X earlier this month. “What a great deal!” he added, followed by an emoji laughing so hard it is crying.
--Brian Schwartz contributed to this article.
Wall Street Journal
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