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Tesla CEO Elon Musk wanted to merge his electric car company with OpenAI, supposedly in an effort to give the AI firm enough funds to further its vision of creating "artificial general intelligence" (AGI), OpenAI's senior leadership argue in response to Musk's lawsuit.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, its President Greg Brockman, and a handful of other executives attached their names to the company's open letter published late Tuesday. It responds to Musk's claims that OpenAI, which he helped establish back in 2015, has strayed from its original non-profit mission to help humanity. Instead, Musk argues, it's now focused on making itself and Microsoft richer.
"We intend to move to dismiss all of Elon's claims," OpenAI writes. "As we discussed a for-profit structure in order to further the mission, Elon wanted us to merge with Tesla or he wanted full control."
OpenAI pasted a series of purported emails between Musk and OpenAI executives, showing that in 2016, Musk agreed that OpenAI couldn't always be so open about sharing its research if a "hard takeoff" AI advancement scenario occurred.
But by 2018, Musk believed OpenAI needed Tesla for funding, writing: "Tesla is the only path that could even hope to hold a candle to Google. Even then, the probability of being a counterweight to Google is small. It just isn't zero."
In February that year, Musk forwarded an email from a redacted entity to OpenAI, agreeing that OpenAI was "burning cash" and that building out in the open could lead to Google swiping OpenAI's advances. Later that month, Musk left OpenAI's board.
In another email sent months after his departure, Musk argued that without a "dramatic change," OpenAI's chances of being competitive with Google were "0%. Not 1%."
"Even raising several hundred million won't be enough. This needs billions per year immediately or forget it," Musk told Brockman, Altman, and Ilya Sutskever, previously OpenAI's chief scientist.
Now, at least, it seems Altman has come around to Musk's belief. Last month, Altman entered talks to potentially raise as much as $7 trillion to fund a chip manufacturing project that could power AI computing, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Musk's old emails suggest a fixation with making OpenAI different from but also competitive with Google, as the Tesla CEO's lawsuit states that Musk wanted OpenAI to be "the opposite of Google."
Google has long been developing AI tools of its own, and recently faced controversy around its generative AI model, Gemini. Google stopped Gemini from being able to create human images last month after the AI repeatedly created historically inaccurate racial representations of people.
Last year, Musk launched his own AI firm, X.AI, and has sparred with Altman online over the differences between his AI chatbot Grok and OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Musk's exact financial investment in OpenAI has been unclear, with figures estimating the billionaire poured anywhere from $15 million to $57 million into the company. In its letter, OpenAI says Musk invested "less than $45 million."