Sam Altman ridicules Tesla over his Roadster refund, Musk responds
Like two toddlers who were somehow given the gift of internet access and infinite money, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are arguing online again.
The latest instance in this never-ending beef was started by Altman on Oct. 30, who shared his unsuccessful attempt to cancel the Tesla Roadster. In an X post with email screenshots, Altman said he had pre-ordered the Roadster in July 2018 with a $45,000 reservation payment. Seven years later, in 2025, he tried to cancel the reservation and get a refund by directly responding to the original reservation confirmation email, which yielded an "address not found" error.
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On one hand, it's not that unusual for a company email address to get changed or expire after seven years. On the other, it's very unusual for a company to ask for a $45k down payment on a car and then not launch it for seven years, so we do kinda get where Altman's coming from.
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Musk responded on X on Nov. 1, first by changing the subject and saying that Altman "stole a non-profit," referencing the odd trajectory of OpenAI from a non-profit to for-profit company. (Musk was involved in OpenAI early, but later sued when the company transitioned to for-profit.) The Tesla CEO then said that Altman's "issue was fixed" and that the OpenAI CEO had received a refund "within 24 hours."
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Altman may have chosen the wrong moment to cancel his Roadster reservation, as Musk recently said that Tesla is close to demonstrating a "prototype" of the vehicle, hyping it up as "if you took all the James Bond cars and combined them, it's crazier than that" — and hinting that it'll be able to fly. Then again, this car was originally supposed to launch in 2020, so we wouldn't hold our breath waiting it to launch.
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
