Mark Zuckerberg agrees with Elon Musk that OpenAI's name is misleading but says Sam Altman deserves credit for how he runs the ChatGPT maker

Like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg says OpenAI's name is "somewhat ironic" and "a little funny" since its AI models are closed-source.

• Elon Musk has long criticized OpenAI for building closed-source AI models despite its name.
• Now, Mark Zuckerberg is dishing out the same criticism, calling the name "somewhat ironic" in a new interview.
• But, Zuck added, Sam Altman "deserves a lot of credit" for how he runs OpenAI and handles scrutiny.

Months after nearly duking it out in a cage fight, it looks like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have found common ground: They both think OpenAI is a misnomer.

Zuckerberg suggested the AI organization headed by Sam Altman is ill-named in a Bloomberg Originals interview released Tuesday.

"It's a somewhat ironic thing to have an organization that's named OpenAI but is sort of the leader in building closed AI models, and it's not necessarily bad, but it's kind of a little funny," the Meta CEO said.

Musk has repeatedly criticized OpenAI — and its name. He cofounded the company with Altman and others in 2015 but left its board of directors in 2018 and has since become a vocal critic of the company.

In February, he posted on X: "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."

OpenAI has a $13 billion partnership with Microsoft that includes integrating the AI firm's technology into Microsoft's Bing search engine, cloud computing platform Azure, and more.

Elon Musk briefly sued OpenAI over the deal, but abruptly dropped the case in June.

Zuckerberg is a fan of Sam Altman's leadership

Although Zuckerberg took a dig at OpenAI's name, he did praise its CEO in the Bloomberg interview.

Asked what he thinks of Sam Altman's leadership, Zuckerberg said he could relate to being under intense scrutiny for his tech giant's work and even thinks Altman is handling it better than he did.

"He deserves a lot of credit for how that organization has developed," Zuckerberg said. "Also, having gotten a lot of public scrutiny myself, I think it's like look, when you're going through it the first time, you don't handle it as perfectly as you would like but I think he's handling it very gracefully. I think he's doing better than I did."

Zuckerberg has faced public scrutiny as the head of Facebook many times in the company's 20-year history, including during the infamous Cambridge Analytica scandal — when the firm was hit with a record $5 billion FTC fine over its privacy practices — and while whistleblower Frances Haugen's testified before Congress about the company.