Elon Musk says 'OpenAI is going to eat Microsoft alive', CEO Satya Nadella responds

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk on Thursday claimed that OpenAI would “eat Microsoft alive” shortly after the launch of the artificial intelligence company’s latest large language model, GPT-5.

The new model, trained on Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure, incorporates advanced reasoning capabilities and an intelligent task router to automatically select the best model for specific consumer, enterprise and developer needs.

Shortly after the launch, Microsoft announced it was rolling out GPT-5 across its product suite, including Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Azure AI Foundry, promising “powerful new advances in reasoning, coding, and chat.”

“Today, GPT-5 launches across our platforms... It’s the most capable model yet from our partners at OpenAI,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella posted on X.

Responding to Nadella’s announcement, Musk wrote: “OpenAI is going to eat Microsoft alive.”

To which Nadella replied: “People have been trying for 50 years and that’s the fun of it! Each day you learn something new, and innovate, partner, and compete. Excited for Grok 4 on Azure and looking forward to Grok 5!”

Musk, who co-founded OpenAI with Sam Altman in 2015 but left the company in 2018, has been a vocal critic of its current direction. Earlier this year, he sued OpenAI, Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman, accusing them of prioritising profit over public good.

In February, a Musk-led consortium — including his AI firm xAI, Baron Capital Group, Emanuel Capital and others — offered to acquire the nonprofit entity controlling OpenAI.

Altman swiftly rejected the bid, quipping on X: “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”

Announcing the launch on GPT-5, Altman on Thursday said that India, currently OpenAI’s second-largest market, could soon become its largest globally.

"India is our second-largest market in the world after the US, and it may well become our largest market. It's incredibly fast-growing, but what users are doing with AI, what citizens of India are doing with AI, is really quite remarkable.

"We're especially focused on bringing products to India, working with local partners to make AI work great for India and make it more affordable for people across the country.

"We've been paying a lot of attention here given the rate of growth and I am excited to come for a visit in September," Altman said during a media briefing.

The new model is a major upgrade over its predecessor, GPT-4, and represents a “pretty significant step” toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), Altman said.

"GPT-5 is really the first time that I think one of our mainline models has felt like you can ask a legitimate expert, like a PhD-level expert, anything... We wanted to simplify it and make it accessible. We wanted to make it available in our free tier for the first time," he said.