{"id":40743,"date":"2025-12-14T01:51:42","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T01:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/elon-musk-just-hit-sam-altman-with-an-800-billion-counterpunch\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T01:51:42","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T01:51:42","slug":"elon-musk-just-hit-sam-altman-with-an-800-billion-counterpunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/elon-musk-just-hit-sam-altman-with-an-800-billion-counterpunch\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk just hit Sam Altman with an $800 billion counterpunch"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/693dac40832e0ef1ead6303e?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Sam Altman and Elon Musk\"\/><figcaption>OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk are competing for the top spot on the list of the world&#039;s most valuable private companies.<\/p>\n<p>BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI\/AFP via Getty Images\/Shelby Tauber\/REUTERS<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>OpenAI overtook SpaceX as the world&#039;s most valuable private company in October.<\/li>\n<li>Now, a secondary share sale could catapult SpaceX back into the top spot \u2014 by a long shot.<\/li>\n<li>It&#039;s the latest turn in the long-running rivalry between Elon Musk and Sam Altman.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If Elon Musk and Sam Altman like each other, they hide it well.<\/p>\n<p>In the latest turn in the rivalry, the two are battling over the top spot on the list of the world&#039;s most valuable private companies.<\/p>\n<p>While the two cofounded OpenAI together back in 2015, the partnership has frayed spectacularly since.<\/p>\n<p>Musk left OpenAI in 2018 and later founded rival startup, xAI. Musk or his company, xAI, has filed lawsuits against OpenAI.<\/p>\n<p>OpenAI held a secondary share sale in October that valued it at $500 billion, taking the lead from Musk&#039;s SpaceX by a cool $100 billion.<\/p>\n<p>Not one to cede ground to a rival, Musk is now planning his own secondary share sale at SpaceX, according to an internal letter to employees seen by multiple outlets. It would value the company at a whopping $800 billion. If that happens soon, it means Musk would have only let Altman hold the mantle for a couple of months.<\/p>\n<p>Musk also confirmed on X this week that the company is exploring a blockbuster initial public offering, which might be the only way OpenAI can regain its lead as a private company. OpenAI this year restructured its business, which would allow it to also pursue its own eye-watering IPO in the future.<\/p>\n<p>While this valuation battle between the two billionaires is maybe cringeworthy theater for the average earner, it underscores a significant shift: investors are pouring unprecedented money into technologies once viewed as speculative science projects.<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX, which aims to make life multi-planetary and colonize Mars, and OpenAI, which seeks to develop a theoretical AI that can reason like humans, are two of the most visible examples, but they are part of a broader surge in frontier-tech valuations. AI, robotics, and defense tech startups have all notched multibillion-dollar valuations in the past year \u2014 bubble be damned.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk are competing for the top spot on the list of the world&#039;s most valuable private companies. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI\/AFP via Getty Images\/Shelby Tauber\/REUTERS OpenAI overtook SpaceX as the world&#039;s most valuable private company in October. Now, a secondary share sale could catapult SpaceX back into the top [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40744,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-40743","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}