• In a lawsuit, Elon Musk alleged OpenAI overpays as part of a pattern of anticompetitive practices.
• An analysis of salary data found that both companies offered pay well above typical industry wages for some roles.
• xAI paid one worker double the industry standard wage for the role; one OpenAI worker made over three times as much.

As the artificial-intelligence industry continues to attract attention, power, and billions of dollars in funding, two major players — Elon Musk's xAI and Sam Altman's OpenAI — are locked in a contentious battle over talent. Musk filed a lawsuit in August accusing Altman's company of offering "lavish compensation" to "starve competitors."

To examine Musk's claims about salaries, Business Insider analyzed wage data from specialty visa applications for each company from 2024. While both offered compensation well above typical industry wages for the handful of roles for which data was available, OpenAI paid some of its staff an even higher premium over standard rates.

The documentation that companies must file when hiring foreign workers on specialty visas like the H-1B provides a window into otherwise private compensation data at both firms and gives rare insight into the expensive war for AI talent.

xAI is only a fraction of the size of OpenAI; the company employs about 100 workers, compared with about 3,000 at OpenAI, PitchBook reported.

xAI reported pay data for 10 worker applications, compared with OpenAI's 86 worker applications. The companies paid 37% and 87%, respectively, above the typical industry wage — or "prevailing wage" — for the roles surveyed, based on data from US Customs and Immigration Services.

The prevailing wage is determined by the Department of Labor. It represents the average wage paid to workers in a particular occupation within a defined geographic area. Employers who hire workers on specialty visas like H-1Bs must pay them at least as much as the prevailing wage.

The data found that pay for the 10 xAI roles with specialty visa applications ranged from $250,000 to $500,000. At the top end, xAI paid one worker nearly double the prevailing wage for the role of principal machine learning engineer.

Among the 86 roles with available data on specialty visa applications, OpenAI paid between $145,000 and $530,000, with one member of the company's technical staff earning more than three times the prevailing wage for the role.

In the table above, BI compared the average salary for each job title included in the USCIS data for the two companies to the average prevailing wages for those titles.

The data offers some insight into how Musk's company approaches compensation amid a legal battle that has reignited the feud between Musk and Altman.

The pair cofounded OpenAI in 2015, and Musk was one of several Silicon Valley investors to collectively pledge $1 billion to the venture. He resigned from OpenAI's board of directors in 2018, citing a potential conflict of interest due to Tesla's work with artificial intelligence.

Since then, Musk has repeatedly bashed OpenAI and Altman, saying the company is "not what I intended at all." Musk sued OpenAI and its CEO earlier this year but withdrew the lawsuit, only to file a new suit in August. In addition to claims about OpenAI's allegedly anticompetitive practices, lawyers for Musk said that he was "deceived" and "manipulated" into cofounding the company.

"This suit is the latest move in Elon Musk's increasingly blusterous campaign to harass OpenAI for his own competitive advantage," OpenAI's attorneys wrote in motion to dismiss Musk's latest lawsuit. Since launching xAI Musk "has been trying to leverage the judicial system for an edge," they added.

Musk, Altman, and representatives for xAI and OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment.

Emails between Musk, Altman, and other OpenAI workers between 2015 and 2016 showed that Musk repeatedly emphasized the importance of recruiting top AI talent.

In the exchanges, which were included as part of Musk's most recent lawsuit, Musk wrote that recruitment should be OpenAI's "most important consideration," and the company should do "whatever it takes to bring on ace talent."

In April, Musk said xAI brought over a Tesla engineer after OpenAI began "aggressively recruiting" workers from the electric-car maker. Based on a review of LinkedIn profiles, xAI has hired at least nine former OpenAI employees, including xAI cofounder Igor Babuschkin, since Musk launched xAI in 2023.

Do you work for xAI or OpenAI? Reach out to the reporter via a non-work email and device at [email protected] or 248-894-6012

For years before he was accused of killing the CEO of one of America's largest health-insurance companies, Luigi Mangione suffered from debilitating pain that doctors didn't seem able to fix.

He detailed the pain, and what he felt to be the healthcare system's inadequate response, in dozens of posts on Reddit between 2018 and 2024.

None of them, though, mention UnitedHealthcare or its CEO, Brian Thompson, whom he's now accused of killing. And none of the posts blame UnitedHealthcare — or Thompson — for his health issues. The only insurer mentioned is Blue Cross Blue Shield, in a brief post describing how it covered a medical test.

But his posts paint a portrait of someone whose pain and recovery led him to put "my life on hold in my 20s." And the experience appears to represent a significant — and excruciating — engagement with the American healthcare system. Like most young Americans, if Mangione was covered by his parents' health-insurance plan, he likely would have aged out when he turned 26 in May, under rules set by the Affordable Care Act.

In handwritten notes from 2019 reviewed by Business Insider, Mangione wrote that he had spondylolisthesis — severe slippage of parts of the spine due to joint deterioration.

In 2022, he described "near-constant burning/twitching in both ankles/calves." By 2023, he wrote on Reddit, he'd been experiencing "back and genital pain" on and off for a year, including numbness in his groin. (Details shared by the Reddit account match biographical details about Mangione sourced from public documents.)

He underwent surgery later that year. An X-ray image Mangione posted on social media depicted a spinal fusion, with rods and screws reinforcing the position of his bones. At first, he appeared jubilant — his pain was gone. But by June this year, he was castigating doctors as "basically worthless" on X.

Public records, social-media posts, and interviews indicate that Mangione cut off contact with family and friends earlier this year. Months later, police say Mangione murdered Thompson on a Manhattan sidewalk, wielding a gun assembled from 3D printed parts.

The scion of a prominent Baltimore family, Mangione was educated at elite schools. Friends say they're now hard-pressed to recognize the kind, unassuming, and whip-smart person they know.

A classmate who led a student group at the University of Pennsylvania with Mangione in 2016 and 2017 said she recalled him as humble, helpful, and immensely driven. She asked not to be named given the intense focus on Mangione, but BI has confirmed her identity.

"I would set my sister or friend up with him," she said. "Just knowing his personality, I would completely trust him. Even knowing what I know now, if he 100% did it, I would feel completely safe being alone in a room with him."

A privileged youth

Mangione grew up in Towson, Maryland, about 10 miles outside Baltimore. His grandfather, Nick Mangione Sr., was a self-made multimillionaire, The Baltimore Banner reported. The elder Mangione, who died in 2008, owned and operated a sprawling portfolio of country clubs, nursing homes, and local radio stations. The younger Mangione is one of 37 grandchildren, part of a large family whose ranks also include a Maryland lawmaker.

Mangione's parents and immediate family did not respond to requests for comment.

Thomas J. Maronick Jr., an attorney and longtime host at one of the family's radio stations, told BI that the family was "very influential" in the local community, which was reeling from the news of Mangione's arrest.

"When you think of the Mangione family, you think of an esteemed family that has done a lot for the community," Maronick said on a phone call. "When I first heard the name, I thought it had to be a different family. It was very out of character for anything I've ever known about the family."

Mangione appeared well positioned to carry on the family's name.

He attended the Gilman School, a prestigious Baltimore-area all-boys school where tuition runs over $37,000 a year. There, he cofounded AppRoar Studios, a company that released a phone game; was in the school's robotics club; and graduated as valedictorian of the class of 2016.

Mangione was "very into sports" and "very social," a high-school classmate told BI. The classmate asked not to be named, but BI has verified their identity. "He was easily one of the smartest in our class. I never would have thought he would have been a part of this," the classmate added.

He went on to the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in four years with both a bachelor's and a master's degree in computer science, a university spokesperson said. He cofounded a video-game-design club and was inducted into the computer-engineering department's Eta Kappa Nu society for students at the top of their class, according to blog posts and the society's website.

He appeared active in his fraternity, photos posted on Instagram show.

Still, his health appeared to drag him down. In posts on Reddit, he described experiencing "brain fog." His "cognitive decline" started after he contracted Lyme disease at 13, he wrote, and worsened after his "very tame" but sleepless fraternity initiation. The fraternity did not respond to a request for comment.

He considered dropping out of college, he wrote, and felt that his condition restricted him to "what feels like 10% of a college experience."

"My symptoms were very minor at first and I was able to excel in high school, but the symptoms worsened exponentially last year," he wrote in 2018. "It's absolutely brutal to have such a life-halting issue."

In 2019, Mangione spent three months as a counselor for a Stanford summer program for high schoolers. He left a positive impression on the students, one of them said in posts on Instagram.

After college, he got a job as a data engineer at TrueCar, an online vehicle-purchase platform, and was regularly promoted, according to his LinkedIn profile and a former colleague.

By early 2022, he had moved to a coliving space in Hawaii called Surfbreak, according to photos posted on Instagram. R.J. Martin, the founder of Surfbreak, told Honolulu Civil Beat that Mangione founded a book club at the residence. On Martin's suggestion, one of the books discussed by the club was the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski's manifesto, Martin said.

Kaczynski, a Harvard-trained mathematician, lived in the wilderness and conducted a 17-year mail-bombing campaign against people he blamed for advancing technology at the expense of the natural environment.

Mangione gave the book four out of five stars on his Goodreads account.

"While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy luddite, however, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary," Mangione wrote in his review of the book.

The book club dissolved shortly thereafter, Martin told Civil Beat, amid discomfort with the manifesto.

Mangione detailed his back-pain journey on social media

In Hawaii, Mangione experienced another health setback. He'd had mild back pain since he was a child, but while surfing in early 2022, he "experienced sciatica for the first time," he wrote on Reddit. "A few weeks later I slipped on a piece of paper and my right glute locked and right leg shut down for a week. Couldn't support any weight on it."

Mangione, writing under the username Mister_Cactus, was a frequent poster in the spondylolisthesis subreddit. He exchanged notes with other people dealing with the condition and advised one poster how to persuade medical professionals to take symptoms seriously in the face of some doctors whose perspectives he decried as "nonsense."

"Tell them you are 'unable to work'/do your job. We live in a capitalist society," he wrote. "I've found that the medical industry responds to these key words far more urgently than you describing unbearable pain and how it's impacting your quality of life."

Martin told Honolulu Civil Beat that Mangione struggled with back pain throughout his time living at Surfbreak in 2022. In a separate interview, with The New York Times, Martin said that Mangione told him the lower vertebrae of his spine were nearly "a half-inch off" and had impeded his romantic life.

But by the next year, Mangione wrote that surgery had helped resolve his pain, at least for a time.

In one post, dated October 2023, he said back-fusion surgery had been "a success." After a week, he had no use for pain medication, he wrote.

"The surgery wasn't nearly as scary as I made it out to be in my head, and I knew it was the right decision within a week, and that I won't have to bother with injections or future surgery for many years," he wrote.

Mangione went dark earlier this year

In 2023, Mangione stopped working at TrueCar. The company laid off more than 100 employees that year. BI was unable to confirm the circumstances under which he left the company.

He appeared to spend early 2024 traveling around Asia, according to Reddit posts. In April, he emailed the author of a Substack he followed to say he would be in Japan through the beginning of May, according to a screenshot of the email the blogger shared on X.

His final Reddit post, in May, was to the Kaczynski subreddit; he shared a video lambasting Chinese social-media culture. On X, his final posts, on July 8, revealed a disenchantment with both the Democratic and the Republican political parties and support for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The previous month, he'd reposted another user's skepticism with doctors.

"My experience with the medical profession — and yours is probably similar — is that doctors are basically worthless unless you carefully manage them, and 2/3 of them are worthless even in that case," the post said.

Afterward, both accounts went dark.

Maronick, the family friend, told BI that there had "been some rumblings" that Mangione hadn't been in touch with his family in "quite some time."

In July, an apparent friend posted on X suggesting that Mangione hadn't responded to messages in months.

"You made commitments to me for my wedding and if you can't honor them I need to know so I can plan accordingly," the user wrote to Mangione. (The user could not be reached for comment.)

In recent months, one of Mangione's cousins began reaching out to Mangione's friends to ask whether anyone had heard from him, his high-school classmate told BI. The classmate texted Mangione but never heard back.

Mangione's mother filed a missing-persons report in San Francisco on November 18, writing that she hadn't seen her son since July, according to the San Francisco Standard. In a statement released on Monday, a group of Mangione's cousins wrote they were "shocked and devastated by Luigi's arrest."

"We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved," the statement said.

Thompson was shot and killed on December 4 ahead of an annual investors meeting for UnitedHealth Group. Police say the bullet casings found on the scene had the words "delay," "deny," and "depose" written on them — which some have taken to be a reference to a book, "Delay, Deny, Defend," which details how insurance companies avoid paying medical bills.

Pennsylvania police, acting on a call from a McDonald's employee, found Mangione eating at a franchise location in Altoona. They say he had in his backpack a gun and a handwritten document expressing "ill will toward corporate America," with the phrase "these parasites had it coming."

Police arrested Mangione on forgery and gun charges. He is fighting extradition to New York, where he is expected to be charged with second-degree murder, a warrant obtained by BI shows. He has not formally entered a plea.

Thomas Dickey, an attorney representing Mangione, said in an interview on Tuesday that he had not seen "any evidence yet" that would implicate Mangione.

"I don't even know if this is him or whatever," he said. "So we're going to test those waters and give the government a chance to bring some evidence forward." Dickey did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mangione's high-school classmate said that nobody they knew recognized Mangione from the photos police released before his arrest. After law enforcement named Mangione as a suspect, though, "the eyebrows made sense," the classmate said.

At his initial court appearance Monday, a judge asked Mangione whether he was in touch with his family, multiple reports from outlets present at the arraignment said.

"Until recently," he responded.

Ana Altchek, Laura Italiano, and Natalie Musumeci contributed reporting.

• Tesla told Cybertruck workers they didn't need to report to work for three days this week.
• Two factory workers told BI they were told a battery supply issue caused the schedule change.
• Tesla shortened production hours for the Cybertruck line earlier this year.

Tesla is facing a battery supply issue on its Cybertruck line, according to two Cybertruck factory workers.

The two workers told BI they were notified by production supervisors that a recent three-day reduction in Cybertruck manufacturing shifts was the result of an imbalance in the production line — specifically, a lack of working batteries for the truck.

The battery issue caused the line to get "backed up" over the past week, one of the workers said.

Tesla didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Employees on the Cybertruck production line were told on Monday they wouldn't "need to report to work" from December 3 to December 5, according to a memo first viewed by Business Insider. In the memo, no reason was given for the schedule change.

Workers were told they'd still receive eight hours of pay for each day they'd been scheduled to work. The regular schedule would resume on December 6, according to the memo.

The schedule for the line has been inconsistent since late October, five Cybertruck workers told BI, and one employee said he began looking for new jobs as a result. The employee said he was no longer working 40 hours per week; earlier this year, by comparison, workers were collecting overtime, he said.

In April, the company shortened shifts for the line, according to an internal memo viewed by BI. Over the past month, the company has further shortened shifts for some of the workflows on the Cybertruck line, three workers said.

Last December, Reuters reported that Tesla was struggling to produce the Cybertruck's 4680 battery at an industrial scale. The battery is also used for the Model Y.

One Cybertruck worker said he felt Tesla was still "working out the kinks," adding that the line has been constantly adapting to increase efficiency and the quality of the truck, including changing factory practices to address recalls.

The carmaker has issued six voluntary recalls since the vehicle was released late last year. Most recently, Tesla issued a recall due to a faulty drive inverter that could cause the truck to lose propulsion.

The Cybertruck is the best-selling electric pickup in the US, according to Kelley Blue Book. When deliveries of the vehicle first started, the carmaker had more than 2 million reservations, according to a tally reported by Electrek. Tesla has delivered more than 27,000 Cybertrucks, per its most recent recall.

There have been some signs that demand for the product may be slowing. The company stopped selling the Foundation series version of the truck in October and lowered Cybertruck leasing prices earlier this week.

Do you work for Tesla or have a tip? Reach out to the reporter via a non-work email and device at [email protected] or 248-894-6012

• Tesla told employees on its Cybertruck production line to take the next three days off.
• Regular scheduling will resume on Friday, the company told staff.
• Tesla shortened production hours for the Cybertruck line earlier this year.

On Monday, Tesla notified workers at the Austin factory where it assembles the Cybertruck to take the next three days off, according to a memo viewed by Business Insider.

"On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this week (Dec. 3-5), you do not need to report to work," the memo said.

Workers were told they'd still receive eight hours of pay for each day they'd been scheduled to work.

The email said workers would return to the Cybertruck production line on Friday, December 6. Tesla also said some workers wouldn't follow the adjusted schedule, and those workers would be notified separately.

It's unclear why Tesla has temporarily changed the scheduling for the Cybertruck assembly line.

Tesla didn't respond to a request for comment from BI.

Factory workers on the Cybertruck line said their schedule had been inconsistent since late October. Four workers told BI that several times after arriving at work, they'd either been sent home or given additional training exercises or cleaning duties to fill their scheduled work hours.

At least one worker expressed frustration with the schedule changes.

"When I started at Tesla you could expect to get overtime pay, now I feel lucky to get 40 hours," said the worker on the Cybertruck line, who'd been with the company for several years.

When Tesla began deliveries of the Cybertruck last year, more than 2 million reservations were recorded in a tally, Electrek reported.

There have been signs that demand for the product may have begun to wane. The carmaker shortened the shifts for workers on its Cybertruck production line in April, according to a memo viewed by BI at the time.

Several reservation holders who were late to reserve the Cybertruck have reported receiving delivery of the vehicle — a sign that Tesla may be going through its reservation list faster than expected. After Tesla unveiled the pricing for the vehicle last year, several reservation holders told BI they didn't plan to order the vehicle.

Do you work for Tesla or have a tip? Reach out to the reporter via a non-work email and device at [email protected] or 248-894-6012

• A Delaware judge decided against reinstating Elon Musk's more than $55 billion pay package.
• Tesla shareholders approved Musk's pay package in June, after a judge voided it in January.
• Tesla said it plans to appeal the ruling.

A Delaware judge has once again slapped down Elon Musk's pay package from Tesla.

"The large and talented group of defense firms got creative with the ratification argument, but their unprecedented theories go against multiple strains of settled law," a Monday filing from Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick reads.

In her ruling, McCormick stuck to her earlier finding that Tesla's board was unduly influenced by Musk when it came to creating his compensation package — which at the time was the largest pay package ever to be awarded to a CEO with a value of $2.3 billion when it was granted in 2018.

McCormick ruled that Musk and Tesla's board members and executives had no procedural grounds to change the outcome of her original determination "based on evidence they created after trial," apparently referring to a second shareholder vote approving Musk's compensation package that was held in June.

She also found that the arguments used to challenge her initial ruling were invalid and weren't raised in a timely manner. The judge ordered Tesla to pay the plaintiff — the Tesla shareholder and former heavy metal drummer, Richard Tornetta — $345 million, which the company may choose to pay in freely tradeable stock.

Stock for the automaker dipped nearly 1.5% in after-hours trading following the news.

Representatives for Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. In a post on X, the company said it will appeal the ruling.

Tesla investors voted to approve Musk's pay package for the second time in June. Tesla shareholders had originally voted in favor of the compensation plan in 2018, but McCormick ruled to void the agreement in January after a Tesla shareholder filed a lawsuit alleging the agreement was "beyond the bounds of reasonable judgment."

At the time, McCormick said Musk had too much power over the agreement due to his close relationships with board members and the ties led to an "unfair price." In her earlier ruling, she said Tesla had failed to make sure investors were fully informed regarding the proposal.

When the compensation package was voided, it was estimated to be worth more than $55 billion due to a surge in the value of Tesla stock. At Monday's closing price, Bloomberg reported that it was worth $101.5 billion.

Musk's net worth has also climbed as the legal saga over his Tesla compensation has played out. In late November, Business Insider reported that he'd broken his previous $340 billion wealth record after a Tesla stock surge following the presidential election. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated his net worth at $353 billion as of December 2.

"Contrary to how some have read the Post-Trial Opinion, the court did not find that the Board should have paid Musk nothing," McCormick wrote in her Monday filing. "There were undoubtedly a range of healthy amounts that the Board could have decided to pay Musk. Instead, the Board capitulated to Musk's terms and then failed to prove that those terms were entirely fair."

In the months that followed the judge's original ruling, Tesla campaigned for Musk's pay and eventually came away with approval from over 70% of the voting shares. The company then presented the vote to McCormick, arguing that the shareholder ratification had addressed her concerns.

However, McCormick in her latest ruling, wrote: "Even if a stockholder vote could have a ratifying effect, it could not do so here."

Do you work for Tesla or have a tip? Reach out to the reporters via a non-work email and device at [email protected] and [email protected].

• Elon Musk helped found OpenAI, but he has frequently criticized it in recent years.
• Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in August and just amended it to include Microsoft. 
• Here's a history of Musk and Altman's working relationship.

Elon Musk and Sam Altman lead rival AI firms and now 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 recently announced his own AI venture, xAI.

There is enough bad blood that Musk sued OpenAI and Altman, accusing them in the suit of betraying the firm's founding principles, before dropping the lawsuit. The billionaire then filed a new one a few months later, claiming he was "deceived" into confounding the company. In November, he amended it to include Microsoft as a defendant, and his lawyers accused the two companies of engaging in monopolistic behavior. Microsoft is an investor in OpenAI.

Two weeks later, Musk's lawyers filed a motion requesting a judge to bring an injunction against OpenAI that would block it from dropping its nonprofit status. In the filing, Musk accused OpenAI and Microsoft of exploiting his donations to create a for-profit monopoly.

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, including Peter Thiel, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, and Y Combinator cofounder Jessica Livingston.

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 of the situation. "I had to reorient a lot of my life and time to make sure we had enough funding."

It was reported that Sam 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 on several occasions since leaving.

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

Musk also added that his "confidence in Dario for safety is not high," referring to Dario Amodei, who led OpenAI's strategy at the time.

In December 2022, days after OpenAI released ChatGPT, Musk said the company had prior access to the database of Twitter — now owned by Musk — to train the AI chatbot and that he was putting that on hold.

"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 and garnered millions of users for its ability to do everything from write essays to craft basic code. 

In February 2023, Musk doubled down, saying OpenAI as it exists today 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 six-month pause on training advanced AI systems.

The March 2023 letter, which also received signatures from several AI experts, cited concerns about AI's potential risks 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 last year 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 has since briefly unfollowed Altman on Twitter before following him again; separately, 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.

He first sued OpenAI, Altman, and cofounder Greg Brockman in March, alleging the company's direction in recent years has violated its founding principles.

His 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 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 future of the case in a hearing.

Musk sued OpenAI again in August 2024, this time claiming he was "deceived" into cofounding the company.

Musk filed a new lawsuit in August against Altman and cofounder Greg Brockman, who recently left the company for three months and returned a couple of days ago.

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 intent of the company was to focus on building AI safely in an open approach to benefit humanity, the lawsuit says.

The company has since decided to take a for-profit approach.

OpenAI responded to the lawsuit by stating that "Elon's prior emails continue to speak for themselves."

The emails, which were published by OpenAI in March, show correspondence between Musk and OpenAI executives that indicated he supported a pivot to a for-profit model and was open to merging the AI startup with Tesla. 

Musk expanded his beef with OpenAI to include Microsoft, accusing the two of constituting a monopoly

Musk amended the lawsuit against OpenAI in November to include Microsoft as a defendant. He also named Reid Hoffman, who serves as a Microsoft board member and former OpenAI board member, as a defendant.

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 filed a complaint to Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the US District Court for the Northern District of California, arguing 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.

If granted by the judge, the injunction could cause issues with OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft and prevent it from becoming a for-profit company.

As Musk's influence on US policy grows, his feud with Altman hangs in the balance.

As President-elect Donald Trump's self-proclaimed "First Buddy," Musk's power and influence on the US economy could increase even further over the next four years. In addition to being a right-hand-man to Trump, he'll lead the new Department of Government Efficiency with biotech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy.

Musk hasn't been quiet about his disdain for Altman post-election. He dubbed the OpenAI cofounder "Swindly Sam" in an X post on November 15. The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk "despises" Altman, according to people familiar.

• Michael Kittredge II's son put the Yankee Candle founder's Massachusetts estate up for sale in 2022.
• The compound, which features an indoor water park and bowling alley, was originally listed for $23 million.
• After two years on the market, the estate could soon be redeveloped as senior living. 

Three years after Yankee Candle founder Michael Kittredge II died in 2019, his son, Michael Kittredge III, put the family's sprawling 120,000-square-foot compound on the market for a whopping $23 million.

Now, after more than two years of no movement and a significant slash to its asking price, the historic Massachusetts estate could soon be transformed into an entirely different kind of living space. The Kittredge family has enlisted Josh Wallack, a Florida-based developer, to oversee the re-imagination of the mansion into a luxurious senior living community that features affordable housing.

In a conversation with Business Insider, Wallack outlined his vision for "Pioneer Point at Juggler Meadow: A 55+ Active Adult Community," a $200 million project that aims to incorporate all the amenities of the Kittredge estate into a community that helps address Massachusetts' housing crisis. 

"This is going to be amazing. Regular people can buy one of these units and live in this amazing place that is like heaven on Earth," Wallack said. 

Take a peak inside the mind-boggling compound.

The former home of Yankee Candle founder, the late Michael Kittredge II, went on the market in September 2022.

The $23 million listing quickly went viral thanks to its litany of amenities. 

The sprawling estate is located about two hours outside Boston in Leverett, Massachusetts.

The estate encompasses 120,000 square feet of living space spread across eight separate structures, including a main house, a clubhouse, a spa, a pool cabana, two guest houses, and two car barns.

The main residence is a 25,000-square-foot house designed in the colonial style. It was originally constructed in the 1980s.

The compound sat on the market for months before its price was slashed from $23 million to $14.9 million.

Wallack and his family stayed at the estate's guest home in 2022 after he hit it off with Michael "Mick" Kittredge III.

As an expert in rezoning, Wallack said the Kittredge family asked him what he thought they should do with the property. 

"Instead of looking for one billionaire to buy this mansion, let's take all the land underneath it and build 700 homes and allow regular people to live here and use your father's mansion as the social club," Wallack said he told the family.

Wallack wants to turn the estate into an active senior living community.

If approved, Wallack's plan would allow people 55 and older to buy individual units on the property, where they would have full access to amenities like an onsite restaurant, cafe, tennis and pickleball courts, and a beauty parlor. 

The project would offer 25% of units at affordable housing rates.

Wallack said the community would be comprised of 25% of units at affordable housing costs and 75% of units at market rate. 

Someone making $84,000 a year would pay about $1,875 a month for an affordable unit, Wallack said.

The budget for the project is about $200 million, Wallack said.

Wallack serves as the development manager representing the Michael Kittredge trust. 

The team is in the final stages of preparing an application to MassHousing.

Wallack is working to garner more community support.

Take a peak at the original mansion before it potentially is redesigned.

The main residence has six full bathrooms and five half-bathrooms spread out between five bedrooms.

The house features 11 fireplaces, including in some of the bathrooms.

The lower level of the house has a 10-seat movie theater.

Kittredge was a car enthusiast who had two temperature-controlled car barns built at the estate.

The spa is a major attraction at the compound and houses a fitness center, as well as basketball and tennis courts.

Wallack said his project would turn some of those tennis courts into pickleball courts for senior residents. 

Kittredge had three outdoor tennis courts and one indoor court constructed at the estate.

The indoor tennis court also doubles as a concert venue, which has hosted such bands as The Doobie Brothers, as well as KC and The Sunshine Band.

The fitness center takes up 4,000 square feet and has multiple locker rooms.

A bowling alley is situated in the 55,000-square-foot spa.

The compound also has a two-story arcade.

In addition to an outdoor pool, the estate also has an indoor Bellagio-style water park.

It is full of slides, waterfalls, and palm trees.

The real estate company that originally listed the compound said the estate is set up like a private country club and includes a nine-hole golf course.

The clubhouse, which looks out on a pool and two cabanas, has four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a full kitchen.

The compound is also home to two guest houses.

"There was nothing he loved more than bringing his family and friends together and hosting parties at his home," Kittredge's son said in a 2022 press release.

• Elon Musk and Grimes have ended their custody dispute in Texas.
• The former couple share three children, including 4-year-old X, who is frequently spotted with Musk.
• Court records show Musk and Grimes were arguing over whether the kids lived in Texas or California.

Elon Musk and Grimes' custody battle in Texas was resolved in August, nearly a year after the Tesla CEO filed a lawsuit against the musician in the state.

The former couple was locked in a contentious custody battle over the three children they share: 4-year-old X Æ A-12, also known as baby X, 2-year-old Exa, and 2-year-old Tau.

Last year, Musk and Grimes filed dueling lawsuits against one another in two different states, Texas and California, respectively, arguing over where the children actually lived and in which state the case should go forward.

Here's a timeline of the custody battle, including when the suits were filed, and the accusations Musk and Grimes have made against each other in court.

April 22, 2022: Grimes filed petition in Los Angeles

Grimes claimed in a recent court document that she first filed a petition to "determine parental relationship" in Los Angeles on April 22, 2022. Business Insider was unable to independently verify the petition in LA County's online courts database.

The document would've been filed a few months before Musk and Grimes welcomed their third child, Techno Mechanicus, or Tau, via surrogate in June 2022. Musk had also fathered another child with Grimes via surrogate in December 2021, Exa Dark Sideræl.

Musk began the process of buying Twitter (now called X) in April 2022. The pair had flown out to see Grimes' parents on April 9, but Musk had stayed behind at the hotel in "stress mode," weighing whether to buy the social media company, Grimes told Walter Isaacson. The billionaire later made his $44 billion bid on April 14.

What followed was a tumultuous year for both Grimes and Musk. The billionaire began sleeping at the social media company's headquarters and got into a series of political spats.

That same year, Grimes also learned Musk had separately fathered a set of twins with a director at one of his startups. In July 2022, Grimes learned of Musk's twins with Shivon Zilis via a Business Insider report, according to Isaacson's biography on Musk.

In August 2023, Grimes and Musk traveled to Tokyo together, but Musk said in his petition that their relationship broke down shortly after. He said Grimes flew back to California on a commercial flight on August 23 and that their two youngest children "have not been back in Texas" since, according to the court documents.

September 7, 2023: Musk sues Grimes

Musk sued Grimes in Texas in early September to "establish the parent-child relationship" with their three kids.

In his petition, he said he took legal action after he realized Grimes "was not returning to Texas with the younger children." Meanwhile, their eldest son, X, had remained with Musk in Texas.

On the same day Musk filed his custody suit, Grimes wrote and then quickly deleted a post on X calling for Musk to "let me see my son or plz respond to my lawyer," adding in response to a photo of Musk with Zilis: "I have never even been allowed to see a photo of these children until this moment, despite the situation utterly ripping my family apart."

Grimes and Zilis later took to social media to say they were no longer feuding.

September 29, 2023: Grimes sues Musk

Weeks after the Texas suit, Grimes sued Musk in San Francisco, asking for primary physical custody and joint legal custody of their three kids.

Meanwhile, Musk waded into the immigration debate, visiting the US-Mexico border on September 28 and calling for a Trump-style wall.

Ten days prior, Musk took his three-year-old son, X, to a meeting with the president of Turkey in New York. The event led to an awkward exchange in which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan asked Musk where his "wife" was.

"Oh, she's in San Francisco," Musk replied. "We're separated, I take care of him mostly."

October 6, 2023: Grimes says the kids don't live in Texas

Grimes responded to Musk's lawsuit in October, arguing that Texas was not the right jurisdiction for the custody battle. In the filing, Grimes said that two of the children had been living with her in California for more than six months before the litigation began and that California is their home state.

She acknowledged that one of the children, X, was not presently in California, but said he was only absent from the state over her objection.

On October 5, Musk learned he was under investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for his Twitter purchase, while on October 7, Musk's X struggled to combat misinformation on the Israel-Hamas war. His company continues to see a mass exodus of advertisers over reports of unchecked hate speech on the site.

November 3, 2023: Grimes tracking down Musk

Grimes revealed in court records on November 3 the lengths to which her team went to serve Musk custody papers, which included tracking his private jets.

Also on November 3, Musk sat down for an interview with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to chat about AI regulation, following a global summit on the issue.

November 20, 2023: Musk accuses Grimes of trying to avoid Texas courts

Musk filed an amended petition on November 20 that accused Grimes of moving to California this year in order to avoid the jurisdiction of Texas, where the billionaire could be ordered to pay significantly less in child support.

The petition was filed only a few days after Musk faced backlash for appearing to boost an anti-semitic post on X. Tesla owners and investors alike spoke out against the billionaire. Then Musk appeared to go on what some called an "apology tour" on November 27.

November 28, 2023: Musk voices security concerns

Musk asked a Texas judge to restrict access to his custody battle for his kids' safety.

That same week, Musk sat down for a bizarre interview with Andrew Sorkin at the Dealbook Summit. At the event, Musk told X advertisers that had fled the platform to "Go fuck yourself" and even directed his comments directly at Disney CEO Bob Iger.

November 30, 2023: Grimes says Musk won't let nannies testify for her

In court records filed at the end of November, Grimes accused Musk of not allowing their children's nannies to testify on her behalf. Family law experts previously told Insider that interviews with nannies might be used to help prove where the kids primarily live.

Grimes said Musk was using nondisclosure agreements that he previously had the nannies sign in order to prevent them from speaking. However, she claimed Musk was "cherry-picking" information from the nannies for his benefit.

On November 30, Tesla hosted its biggest event of the year — Cybertruck deliveries. The 30-minute event drew ire from some Tesla fans after Musk failed to deliver on some of his promises for the vehicle, including its price and range.

December 4, 2023: Musk details evidence of the children primarily living in Texas

In an amended complaint filed in Texas court, Musk included Grimes' own social media posts over recent years in which the musician both explicitly said and heavily suggested she was living in Austin, Texas — including posts from months after she claims she moved to California with her two youngest children.

Musk also detailed aspects of the kids' lives in Texas, including their doctor's visits and schooling. The billionaire also filed another motion to seal the case, arguing his and his children's security is at risk as long as the filings remain accessible to the public.

Meanwhile on social media, Musk has continued to lash out at advertisers who are retreating from his social media platform. On Thursday, the billionaire took aim at Iger again, saying the Disney CEO should be "fired immediately."

December 2023: A Texas judge seals the case to the public

After Musk asked to suspend public access to documents in the case, A Texas judge agreed to close the courtroom to the media and seal the case.

Musk had argued that public interest in the custody battle did not outweigh the safety of his children.

July 27, 2024: Grimes' mother says Musk is 'withholding' the children

In a series of since-deleted posts on X, Grimes' mother, Sandy Garossino, addressed Musk directly, asking him to allow the children to visit their 93-year-old great-grandmother.

"[Grimes] was thrilled for the kids' planned visit to celebrate her birthday this weekend. Today. But those hopes were crushed when the trip was canceled," Garossino wrote on X.

"I am alarmed to learn that the children cannot come as you are withholding them and their needed passport documents from Claire," she added, referring to Grimes by her first name.

Garossino implied that Grimes did not know where the children were and asked Must to "honour your agreement" and return the kids and their documents to her daughter.

"Please Elon, I beg you. This is so painful for my mother, and concerning for the kids. Time is of the essence now," she wrote.

August 2, 2024: Musk and Grimes meet in court for custody hearing

The former couple appeared in Texas court, where they addressed a series of motions, including one brought to halt the proceedings temporarily.

The hearing was closed to the public.

Musk and Grimes' legal representation met at least one more time in court before the case was resolved sometime in August.

November 20, 2024: Grimes opens up about custody dispute

The singer shared details about the legal battle in a post on X, saying she hadn't had time to work on creative projects as of late because "the threat of losing ur kids while going bankrupt fighting for them is not very conducive to creative thoughts."

"I just slept and cried every minute I wasn't explicitly fighting for my kids during that year," she said.

In a follow-up post, Grimes said she had a "fraction" of Musk's wealth and resources."

"Spent a year locked in battle in a state with terrible mothers rights having my instagram posts and modeling used as reasons I shouldn't have my kids and fighting and detaching from the love of my life as he becomes unrecognizable to me, with a fraction of his resources (or iq/ strategy experience), all the while I didn't see one of my babies for 5 months," she said.

November 21, 2024: Business Insider reports that Grimes and Musk have ended their custody dispute in Texas

The clerk's office in Travis County, Texas, confirmed that a judge issued a final order in the case in August.

The status is listed as "closed," according to the clerk's office. Representatives for Musk and Grimes did not respond to request for comment.

It's unclear how the lawsuit was resolved.

The status of Grimes' original San Francisco case is also unclear. A representative from the San Francisco Superior Court told BI they couldn't share information about the case because it was restricted.

As thousands of employees prepared to move into Tesla's new Gigafactory outside Austin, Omead Afshar had to decide what kind of coffee they were going to drink.

Afshar, then operating as a chief of staff for CEO Elon Musk, was overseeing the construction of one of the largest vehicle-manufacturing facilities in the world. He approached picking which beans to brew in the break rooms with the same rigor he applied to more-consequential decisions.

"He had 20 different companies submit, and he went through all of them personally," one of his former skip-level reports said. "He wants everything to be perfect."

It has served him well. This October, Musk elevated Afshar to vice president of North American and European operations, cementing Afshar's status as one of the automaker's most important leaders.

The 38-year-old's rise to power comes at a critical moment for Tesla. The automaker faces increasing competition from other EV makers, slumping delivery numbers, and pressure from unions in both Germany and the US. It will also contend with the administration of President Donald Trump, who has brought Musk into his inner circle while simultaneously signaling plans to end electric-vehicle tax incentives, increase US oil production, and roll back emission standards.

As Musk increasingly turns his attention to politics, Afshar is set to help shepherd Tesla through this volatility.

A representative for Afshar declined to comment. Musk and Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

Over the seven years he has spent working for Musk, Afshar has emerged as one of the billionaire's most loyal lieutenants, driven and singularly focused on his goals. Musk has long trusted Afshar's managerial capacity and attention to detail, four current and former colleagues say.

A former Tesla employee, Seth Sharp, said Afshar gave out his personal cellphone number and invited conversation with employees, adding that Afshar "always answered" Sharp's texts.

Afshar has thrived at a company with considerable executive turnover. Eight of Musk's direct reports have left Tesla over the past year, including Drew Baglino, the carmaker's senior vice president of powertrain and electrical engineering, and Rebecca Tinucci, the senior director of Supercharging.

In May, Tom Zhu stepped away from his duties overseeing global manufacturing in North America and Europe. Zhu, whom some have considered a potential successor to Musk, returned to his former position as Tesla's China chief.

In his new role, Afshar will be taking over many of Zhu's former responsibilities.

"Supporting Elon, who notoriously has a short fuse, isn't easy," Sharp said. "Omead has essentially proven he can stand close to the sun without getting burned."

Afshar, another former employee said, "is like the final boss on the way to Elon: Everything goes through him first." (This employee, as well as several others interviewed for this article, asked not to be named. Their identities are known to BI.)

Years before Tesla, Afshar studied biomedical engineering at the University of California, Irvine, and worked as a ski instructor. In 2009, several months after he graduated, Afshar, then 23, was driving in the Westlake Village neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Shortly after 11 p.m., Afshar lost control of the car. A local news report said he crossed into the median, knocked down several trees, and finally hit a larger tree.

Emergency personnel took Afshar and a passenger, a woman in her 20s, out of the car and to the hospital in critical condition, an incident report said. His cousin Behrad Vahidi told BI that Afshar had "kissed death" during the crash.

Afshar has never spoken publicly about the crash. But in a 2019 interview with his younger brother at an event for his alma mater, Afshar defended Tesla's mission of making driving safer and more sustainable.

Tesla, he said, is unfairly maligned by journalists reporting on crashes involving the company's vehicles. There are over 100 automobile deaths per day, he said, but if a Tesla "runs into someone's garage, that's going to be the headline."

Afshar seemed exasperated that some people couldn't grasp what he saw as the larger picture. At Tesla and other Musk companies, he said, "the mission is good, and what we're trying to do is right."

He joined the company in 2017 as a project manager in the office of the CEO in San Francisco. He moved to Texas in 2020 to oversee the construction of the Gigafactory, which he took from groundbreaking to grand opening in less than two years.

Bloomberg reported that there he was part of a project involving plans for a large glass structure. The Wall Street Journal reported that the project, known as "Project 42," was internally believed to involve building a glass house for Musk. Tesla launched an internal investigation into Project 42 in 2022, Bloomberg reported. The Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission also launched separate inquiries into Project 42, the Journal reported.

The status of those investigations is unclear. The SEC declined to confirm the existence of such an investigation. The DOJ declined a request for comment. Musk has previously said he does not plan to build a glass house.

The four current and former colleagues said Afshar became lower profile at Tesla in 2022 but continued to work closely with Musk. Afshar was named a vice president at SpaceX in late 2022. The Financial Times reported that Afshar also assisted with Musk's acquisition of Twitter, now X, and with cost-cutting initiatives at the social-media company in 2022 and 2023.

Records of text messages from Afshar to Musk, included in a lawsuit related to Musk's purchase of Twitter, underscore their close relationship.

"We all love you and are always behind you," Afshar wrote in April 2022, the day after Musk made an unsolicited offer to buy the social-media company. "Not having a global platform that is truly free speech is dangerous for all."

If Musk responded, there is no record of it in those court documents. Other court documents show that Afshar later invested in Twitter through a limited partnership.

Afshar had formally returned to Tesla by early 2024, five former employees said, though two of those people said Afshar was regularly operating in the background even before his official homecoming.

In recent photos of Afshar, he is nearly always at Musk's side: onstage at Tesla's Cyber Rodeo party; at a meeting with Tesla's manufacturing executives in Shanghai; and at a dinner for brainstorming robotaxi designs.

"Omead is similar to Elon: You have to be prepared to talk about anything or everything in a meeting with him," Afshar's former skip-level report said.

Like Zhu and Musk's family office manager Jared Birchall, Afshar has left barely a trace in the public record.

He's given only two known on-the-record interviews to journalists: one to Walter Isaacson, for his 2023 biography of Musk, and another to Time magazine when the publication named Musk "Person of the Year" in 2021. Election and campaign-finance records indicate Afshar has made no political contributions and has voted only once, in the most recent election.

Outside work, Afshar appears to lead a modest existence in line with his corporate reputation for cost-cutting and efficiency.

When he moved to Austin in 2020, he rented a one-bedroom apartment. That year he received $10 million worth of Tesla shares as a bonus, and in 2021 he paid $1.6 million for a newly constructed three-bedroom home in what a real-estate agent described in a listing as an "eclectic" neighborhood. For at least a year after Afshar moved in, the home across the street had broken windows and stripped siding.

Former colleagues said they observed occasional micromanaging tendencies in his Texas Gigafactory role, but they also emphasized his warmth amid Tesla's high-octane corporate culture.

Some workers praised Afshar for working to improve the employee experience, including buying Texas-style belt buckles to celebrate the factory's launch and planning a factorywide party after the site received a certificate of occupancy from the state.

In the 2019 interview with his brother, Afshar described his devotion to the automaker, saying he had missed birthdays and felt anxious about being away from his phone for even an hour.

Tesla, he said, was a good fit for him. "I like high-pressure environments," he said. "And this is definitely one of them."

Do you work for Tesla or have a tip? Reach out to the reporter via a non-work email and device at [email protected] or 248-894-6012

• Neuralink, Elon Musk's neurotechnology company, is hiring for multiple manufacturing roles.
• A Neuralink recruiter wrote that the firm is looking for people to "boost production" of its tech.
• Experts say it shows the company ramping up production earlier than most medical device makers would.

Neuralink, Elon Musk's brain-computer interface company, is looking to hire manufacturing technicians and microfabrication specialists.

The company, which is developing a device Musk has compared to a "FitBit in your skull," posted the job listings on its website this week. It also held multiple hiring events at its facilities in California and Texas this month, according to a review of LinkedIn posts from Neuralink recruiters and engineers. Two manufacturing technicians work at the company, based on public LinkedIn profiles, with those employees joining in 2021 and February 2024.

The roles will help "boost production," according to one post. "You will be instrumental in ramping production to accelerate progress towards our goal of restoring autonomy to those with unmet medical needs," another post reads.

Manufacturing technicians in Texas would be paid $22 per hour flat rate to produce brain implants and accessories, and are required to work "extended hours and weekends, as needed." In California, technicians would be paid between $28.85 and $44.23 per hour to manufacture the R1 Surgical Robot, which is designed to fully automate the implantation of Neuralink's brain-computer interface.

A spokesperson for Neuralink did not respond to a request for comment. LinkedIn messages to Neuralink recruiters were not immediately returned.

Musk has said Neuralink's technology will eventually allow people to send messages or play games using only their thoughts. Initially, it will work to help people with neurological disorders.

The company received FDA clearance in May 2023 to launch human trials. So far, it has reported implanting the device in two human patients; one patient had issues with wires in the implant coming loose weeks after the surgery was completed.

Tinglong Dai, a professor of operations management and business analytics at Johns Hopkins University, told Business Insider that job posting indicates Neuralink is "staffing up for volume production."

"That's wild for a company that's only implanted two devices in their trial," Dai said. "But in some sense, this isn't really odd if you consider who is running this business," he said, pointing to Musk's experience with "production hell" at Tesla as perhaps influencing Neuralink's focus on quickly building out manufacturing capabilities

A separate listing for a microfabrication technician was posted two weeks ago and is no longer accepting applications. That role lists "experience working in a cleanroom" — a space designed to limit contamination — as a preferred qualification.

Neuralink also appears to be hiring for manufacturing roles for its surgical robot, a job listing shows.

John Donoghue, a neuroscientist at Brown University who worked on the brain-computer interface BrainGate, described the hiring strategy as unusual.

"Typically, at this stage, you'd be hand-crafting the device. You wouldn't be expecting to scale production until you'd fully finalized it," Donoghue, who helped ramp up production for BrainGate's device, told Business Insider.

The FDA previously rejected Neuralink's bid for human testing in March 2023 over safety risks, Reuters reported. The agency cited concerns about movement from the wires connected to the brain chip and the potential for overheating.

Donoghue believes that Neuralink is at least seven years from the FDA approval required to bring a device to market. Any changes to the device, even small ones, would require the company to get further approval from the FDA and could further extend the timeline, he said.

Donoghue said Neuralink's apparent manufacturing push was outside "the usual process" for medical device companies. The company appears to be investing in mass production earlier than usual, he said.

Outside of the manufacturing roles, Neuralink has more than 30 full-time jobs listed on its careers page. It employs more than 600 people, including several former Tesla and SpaceX employees, according to a review of LinkedIn profiles.

It filed plans for a multi-building facility outside of Austin in 2022, according to the Austin American-Statesman. In July 2024, the company filed construction plans for a $14.7 million, 112,000 square foot facility, public records show, and earlier this year, it moved its state of incorporation to Nevada.

Do you work for Neuralink or have a tip? Reach out to the reporter via a non-work email and device at [email protected] or via the secure-messaging app Signal at 248-894-6012.

• The Travis County clerk's office told BI Elon Musk and Grimes have ended their custody dispute.
• Musk sued Grimes in the Texas court last year, and Grimes countersued in San Francisco.
• They met at least once in court in Texas over the summer.

Elon Musk and Grimes' legal dispute in Texas over their three children has been resolved.

The Clerk's office in Travis County, the Texas locale where Musk first filed suit, confirmed on Wednesday that a judge issued a final order in August. The office said the status was listed as "closed" but declined to provide further details.

Representatives for Musk and Grimes did not respond to a request for comment.

The former couple had been in an ongoing battle over custody of their three children: 4-year-old X Æ A-12, also known as baby X; 2-year-old Exa; and 2-year-old Tau.

Musk first filed the custody lawsuit against Grimes in September 2023. Grimes filed her own countersuit against the billionaire in a San Francisco court that same month. A representative from the San Francisco Superior Court said they could not share information about the case due to its restricted status.

Grimes, whose legal name is Claire Boucher, and Musk met in court in August 2024, and the two parties' legal representation met at least one more time in court before the case was resolved.

The case was sealed to the public in December 2023. The judge agreed to close the courtroom to the press and public only minutes after a hearing began.

It's unclear how the lawsuit was resolved. On Wednesday, Grimes said on X that she has custody of the children every other week.

Do you work for one of Musk's companies or have a tip? Reach out to the reporter via a non-work email and device at [email protected] or 248-894-6012