It's influencer marketing. These 'ego battles' are a show to keep their brand in front of you. It's engaging like reality television. This is very valuable, especially for companies that need to fund their growth through investment and grants.

I wish more people were as astute.

The front matter of big politics and big tech is not too different from professional wrestling.

I think OP could be just as astute as you meant. They probably know that Altman is engaging in marketing, but still tried to make a case that it shouldn't be a good strategy and instead illustrates his character. Not that I disagree, as people could see the unnecessary drama as a sign of immature behavior and a negative net result in the long term, regardless if it generates press today. As many other commenters remarked, they will from now think twice about trusting Altman's ventures in the future in light of this long-winded tweet.

It's not that deep, he's not even writing it

This smells a lot of "any publicity is good publicity", which has been false for more than a decade. You know what makes line go up? Results.

OK.

Tesla Trailing P/E: 390.70 Apple Trailing P/E: 34.11 Ford Trailing P/E : 11.74

Perception and execution that is what i call P/E

I'm not sure what your point is. High P/E is a sign of overvaluation and a bad investment. Just because the market is irrational doesn't mean you should sign up for to be a bag holder.

Pretty sure OPs point is that Tesla has shitty results, has a CEO that lives “any publicity is good publicity” as a mantra and the company valuation is through the roof.

Yes and none of those are good things.

They're good things right now for Elon and Tesla. Whether they will continue to be is up in the air. But, it definitely works as a strategy, at least temporarily.

We live in an era where attention matters more than reality. Chronically online CEOs are aware of this.

Om Malik has been writing about this recently, especially regarding OpenAI / Altman [1], but you can see it everywhere.

1 - https://om.co/2026/02/02/openai-and-the-announcement-economy...

Ok Malik. Now there's a name I haven't heard in 15 years. Time flies.

The instant feedback you get from posting on social media is more gratifying/addicting than any other marketing campaign. That's what drives all these CEOs, in my opinion.

It would take a fiasco for such a shake up to happen given how the last attempt went.

They already got a clear signal when they fired him. It's baffling that they did an about face when the red flags were all there.

I've said before, and I stand by it: Judging by the fact that many CEOs of these BigCos are often the leaders of several other companies, the CEO job probably isn't that hard.

Altman said himself that he felt useless compared to Codex, so maybe Codex should just run the company. It would certainly be cheaper.

My dad used to have a boss (at the VP level) who he pejoratively nicknamed "VPGPT", because he thought the guy's management was not significantly better or even different than what you'd get from ChatGPT.

He's a narcissist and has to defend his ego

Well, when the board tried to fire him, he replaced them. Makes this part of the tweet all the funnier:

> One authoritarian company won't get us there on their own, to say nothing of the other obvious risks. It is a dark path.

It has worked fabulously well for Musk. Can't be surprised other's are trying a similar approach. There is evidence that senior executives have more traits associated with psychopathy than the general population. Seems like the thing to expect really. Wonder what media platform Altman will buy.