OpenAI’s Sam Altman Throws Shade At Elon Musk, Cancels Tesla Roadster Order After 7.5-Year Wait: 'Was Excited For The Car'

• Altman said he has canceled his pre-order for the Tesla Roadster, but the company’s email is down.
• “7.5 years has felt like a long time to wait,” he said, referring to the long production delay.
• OpenAI CEO’s post comes amid a series of online skirmishes between him and Musk over the years.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took a subtle swipe at Elon Musk on Thursday, posting on X screenshots of emails he sent to Tesla to cancel the preorder he placed in 2018 for the company’s yet-to-release Roadster electric car.

“I really was excited for the car! And I understand delays. But 7.5 years has felt like a long time to wait,” Altman posted. Like the executive, several Tesla fans are frustrated over the long delay for the new-generation Roadster, which was first unveiled in 2017.

Altman posted a third screenshot showing that his email to reservations@tesla.com had bounced. The post on X, captioned “A tale in three acts,” garnered over 2.7 million views and 1,000 reposts.

Roadster was Tesla’s first vehicle. Some 2,450 units of the sports car were sold between 2008 and 2012, before Tesla shifted its focus to mass-market vehicles such as the Model S. Musk revived Roadster with a second generation, saying at the time that it would have a 620-mile range (1,000 km) and go from 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds.

The model was listed for $200,000, and a “Founder Series” was also offered for $250,000. The model was originally scheduled to enter production in 2020; however, it has faced multiple delays, and its status remains unclear.

Earlier this week, some fans were delighted upon noticing a new job listing for a “Manufacturing Engineer, Roadster,” signaling that Tesla might finally be moving forward with the highly anticipated model. That said, in its updated annual installed production capacity chart, reported by Electrek, Tesla has listed Roadster’s status as “design development.”

The Roadster post by Altman comes amid a longstanding skirmish between the OpenAI CEO and Musk. The two have clashed online on several subjects, ranging from OpenAI’s conversion to a for-profit entity (which OpenAI completed this week, despite a lawsuit from Musk and opposition from critics) and ChatGPT's prominent appearance on the Apple App Store — which sparked another lawsuit from Musk — to how the world’s richest man runs his X platform.

Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI when it started as a research lab in 2015, and left the company's board in 2018. In the years since, he has been a vocal critic of OpenAI, flagging gaps in the company’s not-for-profit mission and concerns over its approach to AI safety.

When Musk made an unsolicited offer to buy OpenAI for $97.4 billion in February this year, Altman hit back: “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.” 

On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment was ‘bullish’ for OpenAI, a private company, and ‘bearish’ for Tesla as of early Friday.

For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.

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