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• Much of the AI-discussion, both hopes and fears, centers on efficiency and cost-cutting.
• At buyout firm Tide Rock, there’s a “mandate” to not use AI resources to cut costs, says its CEO.
• Ryan Peddycord walked Business Insider through how the firm uses AI to grow businesses.

Most fears and hopes surrounding AI center on its ability to save on labor costs. Whether it’s Jamie Dimon predicting a three-and-a-half-day workweek, the chorus of CEOs saying that AI will help its workers get more done, or the research predicting potentially catastrophic white-collar job cuts, the focus is on efficiency.

But at one investing firm, cost-cutting is practically a forbidden word.

“The mandate across the company is don’t talk about using our resources in AI or tech to cut costs or create efficiencies,” Tide Rock CEO Ryan Peddycord told Business Insider.

The firm has had AI engineers for two years, but they’re aimed at growing business, not cutting, said Peddycord.

The San Diego and New York-based firm, which invests in smaller businesses than your typical private-equity giants, does not use debt to finance its acquisitions. It manages $1 billion, including its current investments and dry powder. It has done over 50 acquisitions, with growth, not just financial engineering, as its goal.

“Our foundation is, and our principle is, that we are focused on being growth engines for these businesses, and that’s where we want to focus our resources,” Peddycord said.

Peddycord spoke to Business Insider about how the firm’s use of AI fits into its business model and gave some real-world examples of where it has made an impact.

Tide Rock’s model

The company buys founder-run businesses when founders have “a catalyst to change,” like their own looming retirement or an illness in their family, which means they’re much more protective of the asset they’re selling than your typical financial investor.

They then focus on growing those companies, which means Tide Rock hires chief marketing officers and chief revenue officers “who know how to run businesses” instead of your typical private equity partners, Peddycord said.

The firm’s companies have seen organic revenue growth of 24% a year since Tide Rock was launched 13 years ago, said Peddycord. (He also said the firm has only lost money on one deal over that time period.)

They’re looking for a way to monetize what they built over time, but really just as important to them is for their brand and their legacy and their employees to be able to kind of continue on without them,” Peddycord said.

For founders like this, the story of growth is an essential reason they’d choose to sell to Tide Rock. As such, any discussion of using AI to cut employees or costs is anathema to their sales pitch, whereas AI for growth is a selling point.

AI is becoming an integral part of the firm’s strategy, but they’ve been doing this for years before the advent of LLMs some operational best practices in a library of over 100 videos and 500 pages of documentation.

“A CEO of a portfolio company has access to certain information, a controller has access to a different set of information, a VP of sales has access to information,” Peddycord said.

AI tools have become another operational best practice that the firm shares across the companies it manages, which it tracks in a library of 100 videos and 500 pages of documentation.

The firm also has other centralized resources in-house, “as a bridge” to get the businesses to a place where they can operate on their own, including a centralized talent acquisition team and centralized chief marketing and revenue officers.

This has led to a world where the firm has, for example, been able to integrate a customer relationship management system in “30 to 45 days” instead of “12 to 18 months,” said Peddycord.

How does AI fit in

The company is happy to use third-party applications that can cut costs, but it’s a waste of their own resources, said Peddycord.

“I have a belief that everybody’s so focused on cost-cutting that third parties are going to pick off all the low-hanging fruit there,” Peddycord said. “So us trying to invest our dollars to go create things that other people are creating and probably investing more dollars to do isn’t the right place to spend our money.”

The first tool they invested in was finding companies to purchase. The data on platforms like Pitchbook and Crunchbase is “very, very incomplete” at the sub-$10 million EBITDA level the firm invests in, said Peddycord, so the firm first invested “heavily” in ways to find these companies and start pitching them.

Soon, the firm realized that this ability to find a lot of “non-public information” about companies and then reach out to them would also be “super relevant” for their portfolio companies when they’re looking for new customers, Peddycord said.

Peddycord provided the example of identifying potential customers for its manufacturing portfolio companies that sell to the government, aerospace, or defense industries.

“When Blue Origin wins a large contract, there is some public information that we are able to gather to identify what it is that they won the contract for, and we can even reverse engineer what sub-component parts and services are going to be necessary to then go create that,” Peddycord said.

From there, the firm’s portfolio companies could “get in the door earlier” to offer their sub-component manufacturing help, Peddycord said.

“In those high-growth areas like aerospace and defense, they are working as hard to find new qualified suppliers as we are to find new customers,” Peddycord said.

• Jane Post, 81, lives in a small mobile home that she calls “The Teapot.”
• She lives on her younger daughter’s land and enjoys freedom and independence with family close by.
• Though her home is small, she has everything she needs, and shares it with her animals.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation between writer Jennifer Jane and her mom, Jane Post. It has been edited for length and clarity.

After moving out of the home I loved and lived in for 31 years, it took me a few years to settle on a housing situation that suited me. I was used to living alone and liked it, but my home became too much work and responsibility once I reached my mid-70s, and I needed something different.

I lived with a friend for a few months, then moved across the country from Florida to New York in 2020 to live with my older daughter for a couple of years. However, neither of those arrangements was the right fit for me.

I call my small mobile home ‘The Teapot’

I left New York and moved back to Florida without a plan. My younger daughter offered me a mobile home on her property to stay in while I figured it out. I moved in and didn’t move out. It felt just right. It is small and easy for me to take care of. It’s the perfect size to fit the things I hold dear. I call it “The Teapot.”

I have always loved teapots. I once read a story about a retired Colonel who bought a very tiny cottage in England that had belonged to a little old lady who used it as a tearoom for walkers that wandered by. It was so small that it had just one tiny table and two chairs. The Colonel said it was like living in a teapot. I recalled this story when I stepped into the mobile home, and I knew I had at last found my home sweet home…The Teapot.

I like nearly everything about living in my Teapot. Old people often have balance issues… if I lose my balance, I always have a nearby wall, table, or counter to bounce off of. The only thing I don’t like is that there aren’t enough electrical outlets.

I share my home with my animals, and everything I love is close by

I share my little home with a cast of characters: Penny, the tubby brown mystery mutt mix; Choccy, the chihuahua who has difficulty walking due to old age; Little Thing, a three-legged tiny chihuahua mix; Pinkie, the cat; Agatha Raisin, the bantam chicken; Sarose, her evilness, a seabrite chicken; Jaeger, the barn cat; and then there’s me, the human who does their bidding. My animals bring a huge amount of joy into my small space.

My day begins around 5 am when I start taking care of my animals. I take the ones with special needs outside one by one. I feed and water them. I make my tea. I take Penny for a walk, then put the chickens outside in their pen. I make more tea. I feed and water the wild birds.

I spend the afternoon doing whatever I want. It’s heavenly to sit and watch the birds at the feeders, just six feet away, and sip tea. Everything I want is close by and easy to reach. There is a stack of books sitting on a table to be read.

There are shallow boxes of fossilized shells on top of the two chickens’ indoor overnight pen. I love looking through the shells, thinking about how to make them into lovely works of art. I can’t do that if they are in a box out of sight. I have made many beautiful things in my small world. I think the smallness helps me to focus and be even more creative.

I love that my two great-grandsons, ages 4 and 8, who live nearby, enjoy visiting my little enchanted world. They pop in and out to spend time with me and my collection of little creatures. They feel the magic and love the Teapot as I do.

My home makes me feel happy, even in difficult times

I was very ill recently, and all I could manage was to feed all my animals and get them in and out, then I had to go back to bed, too sick to read or watch a movie. As I lay there, I really felt as if the Teapot was giving me comfort like a warm hug. I could look around and see, with one glance, all the things I hold dear that bring me happy memories.

When you get old, the list of things you’ll never get to do, have, or own might seem never-ending, and past memories are your lifeline. Every memory I’ve fit into my little home brings me happiness and comfort.

Living in a small space is not for everyone, but for me, the Teapot is heaven on Earth. I’m in my 80s now. My younger daughter is nearby if I need anything or want company, but I am able to live independently in a way that works for me. I can have everything that’s important to me at this time of my life — family, freedom from the responsibilities and demands of home ownership, my animals, privacy, peace, and most everything I love at my fingertips.

• My dad died unexpectedly of a heart attack.
• We didn’t know what arrangements to make after his passing because we hadn’t talked about it.
• I didn’t want the same experience for my son, so I’m planning while I’m healthy.

Sitting across from the funeral director, I held my husband’s hand. I needed to feel something real while my body moved between sadness and shock. I glanced at my mom to steady her and at my husband for support. There was one person noticeably missing from our group: my dad.

The day before, I wouldn’t have guessed I’d be spending my afternoon at a funeral home. I had talked to my dad that night and made plans for our weekly dinner. When I hung up the phone, I had no clue that was the last time I’d speak to him. There was no inner hunch that doom was on the horizon, and nothing that said he wasn’t feeling well. So, the next morning, when the ER doctor told my mom, husband, and me that they tried to revive him and failed — I didn’t know how to process the information. Dying of a heart attack made no sense. I thought we had plenty of time.

Throughout my life, we had relied on him to answer the hard questions, and we desperately needed him now. It had only been three hours since his unexpected passing, and here we were planning his funeral. I had no idea what he wanted.

He was healthy and active

I recall sitting at my parents’ dinner table with my then-9-year-old son. He drank his milk while my dad gestured to the desk behind him. The white stack of papers (the size of a small novel) stood out against the stack of magazines. “Do you want to read my will?” my dad asked with a wink.

I paused.

Not really what I’d call an uplifting dinnertime read. At 71 years young, he was active and in good shape — a recent retiree ready to travel and spend time with his grandkids. I didn’t want to think about his potential decline — my dad was invincible.

He never caught the colds and stomach flus I brought home from school. He rarely missed work, and I figured I wouldn’t have to deal with this anytime soon. My grandparents lived well into their 80s — my great-grandmother until 100. I did the quick math — that was at least another 10 years or more.

I politely declined the read, telling him there’d be plenty of time to cover that another day. “That’s all right,” he began with a smirk,” I fell asleep when I tried to proofread it.” And that was that. There was no talk of caskets or whether he preferred The Beatles or the Rolling Stones to be played at his funeral.

No reason to discuss his death when he was so full of life. That night, we finished our hamburgers, and his will stayed on the desk, gathering dust, for the next year. And then time ran out.

Not knowing what my father wanted made it hard to grieve

This memory ran through my mind as I tried to answer the questions the funeral director asked. It was hard to concentrate with this huge lump in my stomach. Mostly, I wanted to cry and run away. Even hiding under the covers right now sounded like a good option.

I concentrated on the warmth of my husband’s hand and answered some basic questions, such as where my dad was born and his age. I failed when asked for his Social Security number. My mom tried to take over, but she was so distressed that her answers were slow and hard to access. I wanted to talk to my dad. I wish I had. This would be so much easier.

Looking at my husband, I immediately thought about my son sitting in a similar seat for us. My shoulders tensed. My tears started again, but this time because I imagined an older version of my kid stumbling through unknown answers with no space to feel his feelings. I did not want this overwhelming ordeal for him. If I could make it easier or eliminate this step completely, I would.

My husband and I made plans so my son doesn’t have to

Later that night, when my husband and I had a quiet moment alone, I told him I wanted to write out our death details for our son. He looked surprised and whispered, “We have plenty of time.” I’m sure that was meant to reassure me, but it was exactly what I said to my dad not that long ago. My mom heart would do anything to protect our son’s space to grieve. I wanted cozy childhood memories to comfort him when one of us couldn’t — not images of his mom or dad in a casket.

A few weeks later, as I processed my dad’s passing, my husband and I talked about our own. We created a checklist of what we wanted, including which funeral home and cemetery to contact. My husband and I added doodles and love notes to the list and made sure our will was in order, too. Instead of freaking my 9-year-old with more morbid information, we told trusted family members where to find all the papers. Fingers crossed, it will sit in my desk drawer gathering dust for many more years to come.

• I experienced sticker shock when I visited a nursery to buy a holiday tree this year.
• A 10-foot tree would have cost me $370 if I’d gone ahead and bought it.
• I remembered being happy as a child in the 1970s with a 4-foot Charlie Brown-style Christmas tree.

It’s traditional for our family to go Christmas tree shopping together, even though my kids are now 15 and 17 and practically leading their own lives.

This year was no exception. We found a brief window between my daughter’s clock-in time for her part-time job at a gift store and my son’s dentist appointment.

In previous years, we had invariably bought a tree from a Vermonter who set up camp in the parking lot of our local church.

When we lived in New York City before our children arrived, my husband and I would buy one from a friendly sidewalk vendor with a truck full of fir trees.

We decided to visit a nursery to purchase our Christmas tree

There was something magical about picking it out, throwing it over your shoulder, and bringing it up to your apartment, despite the pine needles that dropped in the elevator.

Still, as an immigrant from the UK, where people literally drag them home or transport them in the back of their vehicle, I still get a kick from seeing cars on the road with a tree strapped to the roof.

The guy from Vermont had failed to make the journey to our suburb for some reason this year. We chose to visit a nursery based on a friend’s recommendation.

It was packed, but there were scores of trees remaining tethered to poles.

Since it’s my daughter’s last Christmas before she heads off to college, we decided to make it extra special by getting a taller tree than usual.

The price of the tree was off the charts

She got first dibs on choosing, and after browsing the 9-foot and 10-foot sections, settled on the third one she saw.

I strolled off to look at some garlands, only to see my husband frantically waving his arms at me. “Get back in the car,” he mouthed, not wanting anyone to hear.

It turned out the tree that our daughter selected cost $370 — the equivalent of $37 a foot. I gasped in shock. I knew we lived in one of the most expensive counties in New York — if not the US — but the price was off the charts.

There was no way I was going to pay close to $400 for something that would grace our living room for less than a month. Even the kids acknowledged that it wasn’t worth the cash.

My childhood Christmas tree was recycled each year from the garden

The experience prompted me to reflect on my childhood in northeast England during the 1970s. A distant memory stirred in my mind.

I recalled how, several Decembers in a row, my dad dug up a 4-foot fir— for some reason nicknamed George — which was growing in our front garden.

George was so small and sparse, he could have belonged to Charlie Brown. But he’d replant him in a pot, and my sister, Alison, and I would decorate him with lights, tinsel, and ornaments.

Then, at the beginning of January, Dad would put him back in the ground until the end of that year. I suppose we were a green family, long before it became a thing.

I mentioned our search for a more affordable tree to my sister

George was unearthed one year too many and then died. It was a sad day. We had always been thrilled to watch George enter and exit the house every Christmas.

After the sticker shock over the $370 tree, I considered telling my kids that we would plant another George. But we ended up buying another 10-footer for just over $200 from a roadside stand.

I mentioned our search for a more affordable tree to Ali. We reminisced about George. Two days later, she sent me a black-and-white photo from 1976 over WhatsApp.

She’d found a picture of 8-year-old me standing in our yard next to George. My mom had kept it at the bottom of a drawer all these years.

• Elon Musk and Sam Altman cofounded OpenAI years ago, but they’re often at odds today.
• Musk left OpenAI in 2018 and now heads rival xAI.
• Here’s a history of Musk and Altman’s working relationship and feuds.

Elon Musk and Sam Altman lead rival AI firms and regularly take public jabs at each other — but it wasn’t always like this.

Years ago, the two cofounded OpenAI, which Altman now leads. Musk departed OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, in 2018, and has since launched his own AI venture, xAI.

Their latest point of contention seems to change by the week, with Altman explaining how his view of Musk has changed over the years.

“For a long time, I looked up to him as an incredible hero, a great jewel for humanity. I have different feelings now,” Altman said of Musk in a September 10 interview with former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson.

Here’s a look at Musk and Altman’s complicated relationship over the years:

Musk and Altman cofounded OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, in 2015, alongside other Silicon Valley figures.

The group aimed to create a nonprofit focused on developing artificial intelligence “in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole,” according to a statement on OpenAI’s website from December 11, 2015.

At the time, Musk said that AI was the “biggest existential threat” to humanity.

“It’s hard to fathom how much human-level AI could benefit society, and it’s equally hard to imagine how much it could damage society if built or used incorrectly,” a statement announcing the founding of OpenAI reads.

Musk stepped down from OpenAI’s board of directors in 2018.

“As Tesla continues to become more focused on AI, this will eliminate a potential future conflict for Elon,” OpenAI said in a blog post at the time, adding that Musk would continue to provide guidance and donations.

With his departure, Musk also backed out of a commitment to provide additional funding to OpenAI, a person involved in the matter told The New Yorker.

“It was very tough,” Altman told the magazine about the situation. “I had to reorient a lot of my life and time to make sure we had enough funding.”

Altman and other OpenAI cofounders had rejected Musk’s proposal to run the company in 2018.

Semafor reported in 2023 that Musk wanted to run the company on his own in an attempt to beat Google. But when his offer to run the company was rejected, he pulled his funding and left OpenAI’s board, the news outlet said.

In 2019, Musk shared some insight on his decision to leave, saying one of the reasons was that he “didn’t agree” with where OpenAI was headed.

“I had to focus on solving a painfully large number of engineering & manufacturing problems at Tesla (especially) & SpaceX,” he tweeted. “Also, Tesla was competing for some of same people as OpenAI & I didn’t agree with some of what OpenAI team wanted to do. Add that all up & it was just better to part ways on good terms.”

Musk has taken shots at OpenAI since he left.

Two years after his departure, Musk said, “OpenAI should be more open” in response to an MIT Technology Review article that reported there was a culture of secrecy at the organization, despite OpenAI frequently proclaiming a commitment to transparency.

Musk also said that his “confidence in Dario for safety is not high,” referring to Dario Amodei, who led OpenAI’s strategy at the time. Amodei is now the CEO of Anthropic, another leading AI startup.

Musk said he was pausing OpenAI’s ability to train ChatGPT on the X database.

“Need to understand more about governance structure & revenue plans going forward. OpenAI was started as open-source & non-profit. Neither are still true,” he said.

Musk was reportedly furious about ChatGPT’s success, Semafor reported in 2023.

In November 2022, the chatbot took off, garnering millions of users for its ability to do everything from writing essays to crafting basic code. 

In February 2023, Musk doubled down, saying OpenAI is “not what I intended at all.”

“OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it “Open” AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft. Not what I intended at all,” he said in a tweet.

Musk repeated this assertion a month later.

“I’m still confused as to how a non-profit to which I donated ~$100M somehow became a $30B market cap for-profit. If this is legal, why doesn’t everyone do it?” he tweeted.

Musk was one of more than 1,000 people who signed an open letter calling for a 6-month pause on training advanced AI systems.

The March 2023 letter, which also received signatures from several AI experts, cited concerns about the potential risks AI poses to humanity.

“Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable,” the letter says.

But while he was publicly calling for the pause, Musk was quietly building his own AI competitor, xAI, The New Yorker reported in 2023. He launched the company in March 2023.

Altman has addressed some of Musk’s gripes about OpenAI.

“To say a positive thing about Elon, I think he really does care about a good future with AGI,” Altman said in 2023 on an episode of the “On With Kara Swisher” podcast, referring to artificial general intelligence.

“I mean, he’s a jerk, whatever else you want to say about him — he has a style that is not a style that I’d want to have for myself,” Altman told Swisher. “But I think he does really care, and he is feeling very stressed about what the future’s going to look like for humanity.” 

In response to Musk’s claim that OpenAI has turned into “a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft,” Altman said on the podcast, “Most of that is not true, and I think Elon knows that.”

Altman has also referred to Musk as one of his heroes.

In a March 2023 episode of Lex Fridman’s podcast, Altman also said, “Elon is obviously attacking us some on Twitter right now on a few different vectors.”

Nonetheless, he called Musk one of his heroes, adding, “I believe he is, understandably so, really stressed about AGI safety.”

In a May 2023 talk at University College London, Altman was asked what he’s learned from various mentors, Fortune reported. He answered by speaking about Musk.

“Certainly learning from Elon about what is just, like, possible to do and that you don’t need to accept that, like, hard R&D and hard technology is not something you ignore, that’s been super valuable,” he said.

Musk briefly unfollowed Altman on X; Altman later poked fun at Musk’s claim to be a ‘free speech absolutist.’

Twitter took aim at posts linking to rival Substack in 2023, forbidding users from retweeting or replying to tweets containing such links, before reversing course. In response to a tweet about the situation, Altman tweeted, “Free speech absolutism on STEROIDS.”

Musk has called himself a “free speech absolutist” before and said it’s one of the reasons he bought Twitter, now X.

Altman joked that he’d watch Musk and Mark Zuckerberg’s rumored cage fight.

“I would go watch if he and Zuck actually did that,” he said at the Bloomberg Technology Summit in June 2023, though he said he doesn’t think he would ever challenge Musk in a physical fight.

Altman also repeated several of his previous remarks about Musk’s position on AI.

“He really cares about AI safety a lot,” Altman said at Bloomberg’s summit. “We have differences of opinion on some parts, but we both care about that and he wants to make sure we, the world, have the maximal chance at a good outcome.”

Separately, Altman told The New Yorker in August 2023 that Musk has a my-way-or-the-highway approach to issues more broadly.

“Elon desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it,” Altman said.

 

Musk first sued Altman and OpenAI in March 2024.

Musk sued OpenAI, Altman, and cofounder Greg Brockman in March 2024, alleging the company’s direction in recent years had violated its founding principles.

Musk’s lawyers alleged OpenAI “has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world” and is “refining an AGI to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity.”

In response, OpenAI published a series of emails that appeared to show Musk saying he’d agree to the company’s for-profit shift and that OpenAI should “attach to Tesla as its cash cow.”

OpenAI also called the lawsuit “incoherent” and “contradictory,” suggesting Musk was jealous of the company’s success without him.

A few months later, Musk withdrew the lawsuit, a day before a judge was set to consider the case’s future in a hearing.

Musk sued OpenAI again in August 2024, this time saying he was “deceived” into cofounding the company.

Musk filed a new lawsuit in August 2024 against Altman and Brockman.

The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI executives played on Musk’s concerns about the existential risks of AI and “assiduously manipulated” him into cofounding the company as a nonprofit. The company’s intent was to focus on building AI safely in an open approach to benefit humanity, the lawsuit says.

OpenAI has since adopted a structure featuring a nonprofit parent company and a for-profit subsidiary. It responded to the lawsuit by stating that “Elon’s prior emails continue to speak for themselves.”

Musk says OpenAI and Microsoft are a monopoly.

In November 2024, Musk amended the lawsuit against OpenAI to include Microsoft and Reid Hoffman, a Microsoft board member and former OpenAI board member, as defendants.

The billionaire called OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft a “de facto merger” and accused the two of anti-competitive practices, such as engaging in “lavish compensation.” Musk’s lawyers said the two companies “possess a nearly 70% share of the generative AI market.”

“OpenAI has attempted to starve competitors of AI talent by aggressively recruiting employees with offers of lavish compensation, and is on track to spend $1.5 billion on personnel for just 1,500 employees,” lawyers for Musk said in the complaint. 

Two weeks later, Musk filed a motion asking a judge to prevent OpenAI from dropping its nonprofit status.

Musk argued that OpenAI and Microsoft exploited his donations to OpenAI as a nonprofit to build a monopoly “specifically targeting xAI.” In the filing, Musk’s lawyers said OpenAI engaged in anticompetitive behaviors and wrongfully shared information with Microsoft.

The judge called it a “stretch” for Musk to claim he’d be irreparably harmed if she doesn’t intervene to stop OpenAI from becoming a for-profit corporation, but said she wouldn’t stop the case from moving to trial as early as 2025.

In a March 2025 court filing, both Musk and OpenAI agreed on wanting to expedite a trial.

The judge chastised both Altman and Musk in a decision in July for their “gamesmanship” and “excessive court filings” and said they’d “repeatedly over-litigated this case.”

Musk wielded great power and influence as Trump’s self-proclaimed “First Buddy” and onetime de facto head of DOGE.

Musk hasn’t been quiet about his disdain for Altman postelection. He dubbed the OpenAI cofounder “Swindly Sam” in an X post on November 15. 

Musk has challenged a $500 billion AI infrastructure project, Stargate, led by OpenAI.

A day after Trump’s inauguration, the President announced a $500 billion AI infrastructure project in the US called Stargate with initial funding coming from OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, and the United Arab Emirates’ MGX. The joint venture does not include Musk’s xAI.

Musk took to X to challenge the plan and once again criticize his rival. Under OpenAI’s post announcing plans to invest half a trillion dollars over the next four years, Musk wrote, “They don’t actually have the money.”

“SoftBank has well under $10B secured,” he said. “I have that on good authority.”

Altman pushed back, writing that Musk was “wrong,” adding “I realize what is great for the country isn’t always what’s optimal for your companies, but in your new role I hope you’ll mostly put [the country] first.”

In another response to Musk, Altman wrote: “I genuinely respect your accomplishments and think you are the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time.”

Musk led a group of investors in a $97.4 billion bid for control of OpenAI.

Musk said the bid was about returning OpenAI to an “open-source, safety-focused force for good.”

Altman dismissed the proposal, saying, “The company is not for sale, neither is the mission.”

“No thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want,” he posted on X, referring to Musk’s social media platform.

Altman later spoke on Musk specifically, saying, “I don’t think he’s a happy person.”

“Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity,” Altman told Bloomberg TV. “I feel for the guy. I really do. Actually, I don’t think he’s a happy person. I do feel for him.”

Altman believes Musk is “probably just trying to slow us down” with the bid, he told Bloomberg.

“They’re trying to compete with us from a technological perspective, from, you know, getting the product into the market,” Altman said, referring to Musk’s xAI. “I wish he would just compete by building better products.”

OpenAI’s board unanimously rejected the bid, calling it Musk’s “latest attempt to disrupt his competition.”

Musk threatens to sue Apple, saying it gives OpenAI preferential treatment in the App Store.

“Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation. xAI will take immediate legal action,” Musk said. He’d asked earlier why the App Store didn’t feature X, formerly Twitter, higher in its ranking. Grok also ranked below OpenAI in the App Store.

Altman later responded on X.

“This is a remarkable claim given what I have heard alleged that Elon does to manipulate X to benefit himself and his own companies and harm his competitors and people he doesn’t like,” he wrote.

The two traded several other barbs on X, including one message from Musk saying, “Scam Altman lies as easily as he breathes,” and one from Altman asking Musk to “sign an affidavit that you have never directed changes to the X algorithm in a way that has hurt your competitors or helped your own companies.”

Altman said Musk’s falling-out with Trump wasn’t a surprise.

Musk had a public fallout with Trump after criticizing the president’s “Big Beautiful Bill” and later announced his intent to form a new political party, the America Party.

Asked at the annual Sun Valley conference about the matter, Altman said he didn’t know much about Musk’s new party but wasn’t surprised Musk had feuded with Trump.

“Elon busts up with everybody,” Altman said.

Altman and Musk have also spent plenty of time criticizing each other’s AI chatbots.

In a recent conversation with reporters, Altman said OpenAI wants to make useful products, adding, “You will definitely see some companies go make Japanese anime sex bots,” appearing to reference Grok, which has some NSFW personas.

Musk has also tried to pit ChatGPT against Altman, tweeting a screenshot in August showing it had answered Musk’s question about whether he or Altman is “more trustworthy.”

Altman’s failed Tesla reservation cancellation sparked a new spat.

On October 30, Altman published a “tale in three acts” on X that started with a 2018 screenshot of his Tesla Roadster reservation, which included a $45,000 fee. Next was a screenshot of his request to cancel the reservation. Then, a screenshot that showed his request was met with an automated “address not found” response.

“I really was excited for the car! And I understand delays. But 7.5 years has felt like a long time to wait,” Altman wrote in his next X post.

Musk fired back the next day, saying there was a fourth act to Altman’s tale in which he got a refund within 24 hours. He also accused Altman of stealing OpenAI.

“i helped turn the thing you left for dead into what should be the largest non-profit ever,” Altman responded.

OpenAI, which restructured in October, has a nonprofit arm called the OpenAI Foundation, which holds equity in the for-profit side of the business. The company has said it’s “one of the best-resourced philanthropic organizations ever.”

On X, Altman followed up his statements by accusing Musk of wanting Tesla to take over OpenAI and turn it into a for-profit business, without the OpenAI Foundation.

“now you have a great AI company and so do we,” Altman said. “can’t we all just move on?”

Musk v. Altman is heading for trial

A federal judge in Oakland, California, has set a trial date of March 30, 2026, for the first of what may be multiple trials in Musk’s civil racketeering lawsuit against Altman, Brockman, OpenAI, and Microsoft.

This first trial will deal with Musk’s claim that Altman is improperly transforming OpenAI from an altruistic, purely nonprofit artificial generative intelligence lab into what his lawsuit calls a “$157 billion, for-profit, market-paralyzing gorgon,” which is a contention Altman denies.

Prior to the trial, there have been extended battles over evidence and the depositions of witnesses, including wealth manager Jared Birchall and Neuralink’s director of operations, Shivon Zilis, who is the mother of four of Musk’s children.

The courtroom is set to be helmed by US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, a jurist who brooks no nonsense.

SpaceX looks to overtake OpenAI as the world’s most valuable private company.

SpaceX is planning a secondary share sale, according to an internal message to employees seen by multiple outlets, which would value the company at $800 billion, reclaiming the top spot among the world’s most valuable private companies from OpenAI.

OpenAI executed its own secondary share sale in October, valuing the company at $500 billion.

The letter to employees also says SpaceX is exploring an initial public offering to “raise a significant amount of capital,” The Wall Street Journal and other outlets reported. It would be the largest IPO in history.

“The thinking is that if we execute brilliantly and the markets cooperate, a public offering could raise a significant amount of capital,” SpaceX Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen told staff in the December 12 message.

Musk also hinted at an IPO earlier this week.

After journalist Eric Berger published an op-ed arguing that SpaceX is likely to go public soon, Musk replied, “as usual, Eric is accurate.”

The company is aiming to raise more than $25 billion through an initial public offering, a move that could push its valuation above $1 trillion, Reuters reported.

• In 1983, Lynne Austin was offered an opportunity to be a “billboard girl” for a new restaurant called Hooters.
• 42 years later, she reflects on Hooters’ early days, unique marketing, and rapid rise in popularity.
• The early Hooters was very different from what it is now, she said.

This as-told-to essay is based on conversations between Business Insider’s Liz Rowley and Jess Orwig with Lynne Austin, 64, the original Hooters Girl and a 42-year veteran of the company. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I’ve been proud to be the original Hooters Girl since day one, when we didn’t even know we would be what we are today.

I got involved with Hooters in 1983. I was 22, working as a telephone operator and doing bikini contests as a side gig. After winning a contest on Clearwater Beach, the secretary of Ed Droste, one of Hooters’ founders, approached me and said I’d be a perfect billboard girl for a restaurant that Ed and his partners were ready to open.

I thought, “I don’t even know what a billboard girl is.” Instead, I told her, “Sure, OK.” I took his card, went home, and forgot all about it. Two months later, I was driving to another bikini contest, and I saw a construction sign: “Coming soon: Hooters.” I made a hard right toward the parking lot, and that turn changed my life.

Watch Lynne, Ed, and other famous Hooters names recall the early days and how the company has evolved over more than four decades:

I initially scrubbed fridges

I was totally into the idea of being the Hooters Girl, wearing the uniform, and posing for pics. What I wasn’t so wowed by was the idea of quitting my job and becoming a waitress, but Ed persuaded me with talk about “world fame,” so I figured, why not give it a shot?

I quit my job in July 1983 because Hooters was supposed to open around the first week of August. Then September rolled around, and we still weren’t open due to some licensing issues, and I was getting nervous because I wasn’t making any money.

I told Ed I needed a job, and he pointed me to one of the owners, Gil DiGiannantonio, who told me to come down and they’d find something for me. He put me to work scrubbing refrigerators, stoves, and other kitchen appliances for the restaurant for $5 an hour until we finally opened in October. That was a long September.

The Hooters I first started working at was very different from today’s establishments

The atmosphere at Hooters in the beginning was very different from what it is now. People didn’t know what to expect when they came in, and honestly, we didn’t know what to expect day to day.

I remember one time Gil told me we had to let a waitress, Brenda, go because she was wasting too much product. She would grab the paper towels on a spool from the back and drag them all the way through the restaurant if someone asked for a napkin. I was like, “She’s making people laugh. This is what we are, we’re fun! Please, don’t fire her.” He didn’t.

It was barely controlled chaos, but it was a blast. That said, we initially weren’t generating any revenue. I was pulling double shifts, sometimes three in a row, just to scrape by. We were winging it, doing anything we could to get customers.

Then, around spring break of ’84, about six months after opening, it was like a switch. We were suddenly seeing hourslong lines out the door. It was something else. People couldn’t get enough. I’d never seen a meteoric rise like that before or since.

I’d never seen such a meteoric rise

Hooters’ success is largely due to its off-the-wall marketing. Ed was the brains behind a lot of it, willing to do anything and everything to try and get publicity.

We’d be at the restaurant at 5:30 a.m. to pick up a platter of freshly prepared wings and bring it to the local radio stations for a chance to promote ourselves on the radio. We got a lot of doors shut in our faces, at first.

Ed and Brenda — yes, paper towels Brenda — painted “Hooters” in bright orange on a capsized boat along the busy Courtney Campbell Causeway connecting Tampa to Clearwater.

Ed would even stand outside the restaurant in a chicken suit to try and get people in. We posted a billboard of me in the now-iconic orange shorts and white t-shirt. I also modeled for Playboy, which got us more publicity.

It was all marketing.

I had no idea that the billboard of me would bloom into what the brand has become. Eventually, it felt like my face was everywhere — on taxis and the side of the semis that brought in our food. It never ceased to thrill me.

Hooters is my family

As we grew and expanded, I had more opportunities, such as helping to open new restaurants and contributing to the annual calendar and pageant.

A couple of my favorite moments were when I dropped the flag on the Hooters 500 and when I marched on Washington in 1995, protesting the sex bias case against Hooters.

Yes, sex appeal was part of the Hooters concept. However, Hooters and its waitresses are so much more than the restaurant. After 42 years, they’ve become my family.

The Hooters Girls are my sisterhood. Some of those women were my bridesmaids and attended the birth of my children. We’ve been each other’s support system through highs and lows, and I still stay in touch with some of them, including Brenda.

I worked as a waitress and guest bartender for Hooters for about seven years until I branched out and took on other roles, including in radio and local TV, where I continued to promote the brand.

Looking back, I hope that I was an integral part of shaping Hooters. I still participate in events, such as judging the annual pageant and selecting the calendar. It has been the ride of my life, besides, of course, being a mom to my four kids.