Years ago, long before Sam Altman was CEO of Open AI, one of the hottest AI companies in the world,

he was just a young entrepreneur with big dreams.

And there was someone in the tech world

who he really admired, someone he considered a hero.

Elon Musk.

In Elon he immediately saw someone that he could look up to and also try and cultivate as a mentor over time.

That's our colleague Berber Jin.

Altman and Musk would eventually become friends and go on to co-found open AI together.

But over the years their relationship became turbulent.

And Altman's hero turned on him.

And last week, their tense relationship got even worse.

Elon Musk, suing Open AI and the company CEO,

Sam Altman, alleging they have breached the company's

founding agreement by putting profit ahead of benefiting humanity.

Open AI denies the claims made in the lawsuit.

And how would you characterize Elon Musk's relationship with Sam Alman now?

Yeah, I would say it's pretty toxic in some ways because he literally sued Sam.

I mean, I guess it's one thing if he's trashing Open AI as a business, but he's not really doing that.

He's really going after Sam and specifically Sam's ethics and his morality as a person, right?

I mean, it's just a really dramatic unraveling of their relationship.

Welcome to the journal,

our show about money, business, and power.

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