Early this month, Elon Musk filed an injunction in a California court to stop OpenAI's transition to a for-profit structure. He argued that this move violates OpenAI's original non-profit mission. Now, OpenAI has filed its response in court to dismiss Elon Musk's claims and has also published several email and message conversations that happened between the OpenAI team and Elon Musk.
OpenAI's latest claim is simple and straightforward. Back in 2017, Elon wanted a for-profit structure for OpenAI with majority equity and full control. Later, when the OpenAI team rejected his proposal, he walked away and even claimed that OpenAI would fail. Now that OpenAI is successful, he wants OpenAI to continue its mission.
When OpenAI first created its for-profit subsidiary in 2019, it sent Elon Musk an advance copy of the announcement blog post. Musk asked OpenAI to explicitly mention that he was no longer part of OpenAI and even declined to have his equity in the for-profit subsidiary.
Elon Musk left the board of OpenAI Nonprofit in February 2018 and is not formally involved with OpenAI LP. We are thankful for all his past help.
The OpenAI team wrote the following regarding Elon Musk's courtroom fight:
You can’t sue your way to AGI. We have great respect for Elon’s accomplishments and gratitude for his early contributions to OpenAI, but he should be competing in the marketplace rather than the courtroom. It is critical for the U.S. to remain the global leader in AI. Our mission is to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity, and we have been and will remain a mission-driven organization. We hope Elon shares that goal, and will uphold the values of innovation and free market competition that have driven his own success.
OpenAI also published the following timeline of events involving Elon Musk and OpenAI:
- November 2015: OpenAI started as a non-profit, which Elon questioned
- December 2015: OpenAI publicly announced
- Early 2017: Our research progress led us to realize we would need billions of dollars for the compute to build AGI
- Summer 2017: We and Elon agreed that a for-profit was the next step for OpenAI to advance the mission
- Fall 2017: Elon demanded majority equity, absolute control, and to be CEO of the for-profit
- September 2017: Elon created the public benefit corporation called “Open Artificial Intelligence Technologies, Inc.”
- September 2017: We rejected Elon's terms because giving him unilateral control of OpenAI and its technology would be contrary to the mission
- January 2018: Elon said OpenAI was on a path for certain failure unless we merged into Tesla.
- February 2018: Elon resigned as co-chair of OpenAI
- December 2018: Elon told us to raise “billions per year immediately or forget it”
- March 2019: We announced the capped-profit OpenAI LP within the non-profit
- March 2023: Elon started his OpenAI competitor, xAI
You can read the full email and message conversations regarding this matter here. This fight between Elon Musk and OpenAI highlights the complexities of balancing profit and mission in the rapidly evolving field of AI. It remains to be seen how the court will rule and what impact this will have on OpenAI's future.
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