Sam Altman wants to compete with Elon Musk's SpaceX

The rivalry between Sam Altman and Elon Musk may be too big to be contained by planet earth.

A report in The Wall Street Journal says the CEO of OpenAI is considering either partnering with a rocket company or acquiring it altogether in order to compete with Musk's SpaceX. That could represent a gamble of billions of dollars from the founder and venture capitalist.

That status of any talks at present is unclear. Started at the height of market enthusiasm for AI, Altman reportedly reached out to Stoke Space, a startup founded in 2020 by veterans of Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. Proposals included OpenAI making equity investments in the company with the goal of acquiring a controlling stake. Those talks, however, are no longer active, the WSJ reported.

OpenAI has other things to focus on these days. Altman sent a memo to the company's staff Monday declaring a "code red" and ordering employee's primary focus to be on improving ChatGPT. As part of that directive, Altman reportedly said OpenAI would be pushing back work on other projects, including, presumably, any space ventures.

Altman has a history with Stoke Space as he formerly ran Y Combinator, the startup incubator that invested in Stoke. He has also publicly mulled building a rocket company on podcasts in the past.

Should Altman follow through with his space plans, it would be yet another field where he and Musk face off. Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI, but has since left the company (after trying to merge it with Tesla in 2018). Earlier this year, Musk attempted to purchase OpenAI, but was rebuffed. He has been one of Altman's most vocal critics in recent years, has filed several lawsuits against OpenAI and has launched his own Ai company to compete.

Altman has since launched a startup that competes with Musk's Neuralink and OpenAI is working on a social media network that would compete with X.