Sam Altman saw Musk’s fallout with Trump coming: ‘Elon busts up with everybody’ 

·Elon MuskSam Altman saw Musk’s fallout with Trump coming: ‘Elon busts up with everybody’ BY Eleanor PringleBY Eleanor PringleReporterEleanor PringleReporterEleanor Pringle is a reporter at Fortune covering news, the economy, and personal finance

SEE FULL BIO Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI, has had his own run-ins with Tesla CEO Elon MuskNathan Howard/Bloomberg - Getty ImagesOpenAI CEO Sam Altman was unsurprised by the Tesla CEO’s fallout with President Trump, telling reporters, “Elon busts up with everybody… that’s what he does. ” After the Musk-Trump partnership somewhat unraveled, former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told Fortune this may have been inevitable given their “very powerful personalities and both have individual strength. ” As the Elon Musk and Donald Trump partnership grew closer and closer on the election trail last year, the primary question spectators were asking was: How long will this last

The second was ly to be: How large will the fallout be

With President Trump now situated in the Oval Office and Musk nowhere to be seen in the White House after a tumultuous few months leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the duo seems to be in something of a cooling-off period

It came after the Tesla CEO lambasted the decision-making of the White House particularly over Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill,’ which he claimed undid all the budgetary efficiencies achieved by DOGE and would plunge the nation into further debt

Musk also claimed Trump was in the Epstein files—a statement he has since walked back on

The president said he was “very disappointed” in the richest man on Earth and threatened to withdraw government subsidies from Musk’s private endeavors

If there’s one person who saw the fallout coming, it was OpenAI’s boss Sam Altman. “Elon busts up with everybody,” he told reporters yesterday, adding, “that’s what he does. ” When asked how the nature of his relationship stands with the SpaceX founder, Altman replied: “How do you think. ” Altman knows firsthand what it’s to partner with Musk and then watch the bridges burn

In the ing years, the relationship between Musk and Altman soured, with Musk departing in 2018 after reportedly trying to take over leadership of the company, which failed

In 2023, Musk announced the launch of xAI, which subsequently released its chatbot, Grok, to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT

Representatives for Musk did not respond to Fortune’s request for

Altman facing challengers on all fronts But Musk isn’t the only titan Altman is currently jostling with

When asked how he was feeling the talent war with a Big rival, Altman responded yesterday he felt “fine,” adding: “I mean obviously we have an incredibly talented team and I think they really love what they’re doing

Obviously, some people will go different places—there’s a lot of excitement, I guess you could say, in the industry. ” Altman added that he hadn’t spoken to Zuckerberg poaching talent but expects to see him this week at the Sun Valley conference. ‘Sooner or later’ The news of Musk and Trump’s almighty falling out wasn’t news to those who have worked closely with the president, either

Wilbur Ross served as Commerce Secretary under the first Trump administration and spoke to Fortune exclusively last month

He said the clash between the world’s richest man and arguably the world’s most powerful isn’t particularly surprising, explaining: “Both are very powerful personalities and both have individual strength, in the case of Musk he has a bully pulpit through his social media, and he has the economic power that he wielded in the election

Trump obviously has the political power and the power of the office of president. “So given that there was such powerful personalities and that each has its own almost separate power base [it’s] not surprising that sooner or later, they would have a bit of a falling out. ” Musk had previously been jostling with members of the Trump team on issues tariffs, outright opposing Trump 2. 0’s headline policy and lambasting its architects, such as advisor Peter Navarro

Secretary Ross added that despite such rifts, Trump respected some of the work Musk had done with DOGE: “I think Trump has made he does what DOGE accomplished and indeed he’s continuing with a lot of the Musk people in further implementing those throughout the administration

I think there’s ly a mutual respect between the two, but you know, even happily married people occasionally have a spat. ” Between Secretary Ross’s interview with Fortune and the time of writing, Musk has also announced his intention to launch a new political party called the America Party, viding an alternative to Republicans and Democrats

Trump has labelled this notion as “ridiculous,” saying it will add to political “confusion,” perhaps suggesting that a short-term spat between the pair may spin into a longer-term feud

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