It’s Altman against Musk once again.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the recent attention he received from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk must mean his company is doing a good job.

“There are many benchmarks that suggest 5.6 soles is the best model in the world right now,” Altman wrote in X on Saturday, referring to his company’s latest model. “But the most reliable way to know is that Elon is obsessed with me again.”

Musk turned his attention back to Altman after Apple filed an explosive lawsuit on Friday, accusing OpenAI, its io hardware partner and two former Apple employees of stealing trade secrets. OpenAI acquired io, a design company run by Jony Ive, the legendary former Apple designer, last year as it moves into consumer AI hardware.

In a brief statement responding to the lawsuit, OpenAI said it “has no interest in the trade secrets of other companies.”

It’s just the kind of thing that catches the attention of Musk, who spent part of his weekend criticizing the OpenAI CEO, whom he repeatedly called “Scam Altman.”

In response, Altman argued that Musk was also a fraudster. “Man, you’re the one selling public market investors on short-term space data centers,” Altman wrote.

Musk responded that SpaceX would start “carrying” them next year (which seems ambitious, although the CEO of several companies is famous for missing self-imposed deadlines) and joked that Altman could visit them if his “probation officer” would let him.

Musk and Altman co-founded OpenAI in 2015, but their relationship later fractured over control, funding and direction of the company. They have been fighting each other ever since.

In 2024, Musk sued OpenAI, Altman, and OpenAI president Greg Brockman, accusing them of cheating him out of his early charitable contributions by eventually operating OpenAI as a for-profit company. OpenAI was originally a non-profit organization. A federal jury ruled against Musk in May. Musk said he planned to appeal.

Musk founded rival artificial intelligence company xAI in 2023, which is now part of SpaceX.

“After stealing an open source AI charity, you stole all of Apple’s phone technology! Wow,” Musk wrote on X on Saturday, referring to his claims in the lawsuit he lost. “What are you planning for an encore? That’s hard to beat.”

Altman has not yet responded.