Elon Musk posts: I miss Larry Page
On October 30, 2026, Elon Musk posted on X that “I miss Larry Page” and cited a post published by @Dogetothemoon. The cited post retold a story that Steve Jurvetson had told Musk: at a Google event, Larry Page suddenly asked Jurvetson how much money he had, then said that if he were hit by a car that day, all of his assets should be left to Elon Musk. Musk later confirmed this and said that Page was a good friend, adding that the two met around 1997, before Page received venture capital.
The cited post also mentioned that Jurvetson added Page believed that companies pursuing goals aligned with his own interests, such as reducing dependence on oil and colonizing other planets, could achieve more than giving money to nonprofit organizations. Musk’s post did not further explain the context or any subsequent actions.
Original sources:
Title: I miss Larry Page Publisher: Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Publication date: 2026-10-30 URL: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2116201375613018416 Source nature: Original post by the person involved Verification status: The full text of the original post and the cited content were actually read in this report, verification date 2026-10-30 Supporting content: On October 30, 2026, Musk posted “I miss Larry Page” and cited the related story
Title: Steve Jurvetson once told Elon Musk a story he had never heard before. Publisher: Doge Tipping (@Dogetothemoon) Publication date: 2026-10-29 URL: https://x.com/Dogetothemoon/status/2115914334341939242 Source nature: Original post by the person involved (cited) Verification status: The text of the original post was actually read in this report, verification date 2026-10-30; the post contains a video, which itself was not watched Supporting content: It retold the story of Jurvetson saying Page had once stated that if he were hit by a car, his assets should be left to Musk, and that Musk called him a good friend and said they met around 1997
ABAB AI Insight
Elon Musk’s relationship with Larry Page can be traced back to around 1997. According to Walter Isaacson’s 2023 Musk biography and related reports, the two were long-time friends. Musk repeatedly stayed overnight at Page’s Palo Alto home, and the two discussed AI, space, and the future of humanity. Fortune included the two on its 2016 list of business leaders who were “secret best friends.” At Musk’s 2013 birthday party, the two had an intense argument over AI risk: Musk argued that safety guardrails were needed to prevent AI from potentially replacing or threatening humans, while Page believed that machines surpassing humans was the next stage of evolution and called Musk a “speciesist.” Musk replied that he was “pro-human.”
This disagreement was directly tied to the path that led to the founding of OpenAI. In 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI with Sam Altman, explicitly as a counterweight to Google’s acquisition of DeepMind in 2014 for about $500 million. During that process, Musk personally recruited Ilya Sutskever, who was then at Google, to join OpenAI as co-founder and chief scientist, with a salary of about $1.9 million plus a signing bonus. According to Musk’s account to Isaacson, Page therefore felt betrayed and refused to speak to him again. Musk once said that if Larry had not been so casual about AI safety back then, there would have been no need to create a counterweight. In a 2023 Lex Fridman podcast, Musk still said he hoped to be friends with Page again, saying that it had been a long time since they had seen each other and that they had been friends for a long time. During OpenAI’s lawsuit trial in April 2026, Musk again brought up under oath this friendship rupture caused by their disagreement over AI safety.
A comparable example is the evolution of Musk’s relationship with other early figures in the tech world, such as Oracle’s Larry Ellison. Musk once called Ellison one of the smartest people he had ever met, and when Tesla faced lawsuits and controversy over the “funding secured” tweet in 2018, Ellison invested about $1 billion and joined the board to publicly show support. By contrast, the rift between Page and Musk was more centered on control over the direction of AI: one side pushed for an independent lab with safety first, while the other led Google’s integration path for DeepMind. The two had once deeply trusted each other (Page once told Charlie Rose that if he suddenly died, he would leave his assets to Musk), but the disagreement over AI governance ended the personal relationship, while the companies remained financially intertwined at the corporate level (such as Google holding SpaceX shares).
Musk’s post this time, which cited an old incident in which Page expressed a high level of trust and publicly said he missed him, shows that even at a time when OpenAI has shifted from a nonprofit to a commercial entity and triggered litigation, he still frames the collapse of that friendship as a fundamental disagreement over AI safety rather than simple business competition. For the specific parties involved, this reinforces Musk’s self-narrative as an “AI safety counterweight” — one that paid the price of a private relationship in exchange for a research path independent of Google DeepMind — and gives his later criticism of OpenAI’s direction a historical anchor. The key point to watch is whether Page or Google will issue any public response, and whether Musk will further elaborate on his current stance toward AI safety and his old friend.
ABAB News · Law of Cognition
A fundamental disagreement over AI safety can cause long-time friends to completely cut off contact after recruiting key talent.
Publicly saying one misses an old friend often reaffirms the principled stance that led to the split back then, rather than simple nostalgia.