In early 2023, when Elon Musk began attacking OpenAI in public, Sam Altman sent him a text.
He was upset.
“i am tremendously thankful for everything you’ve done to help—i dont think openai would have happened without you—and it really fucking hurts when you publicly attack openai,” Altman said.
The complicated and messy history between Musk and Altman is set to spill into a courtroom this week, where nine ordinary Californians will have the chance to render a verdict.
The jury will be tasked with digging into Musk’s grievances against Altman. Did Altman, as Musk alleges, deceive the Tesla CEO about his for-profit plans for OpenAI?
The case gets to the heart of one of the biggest questions in our era of Big Tech: Can flawed human beings be trusted to run unimaginably powerful companies?
The media buildup has been equally charged. Bloomberg has cast the case as a “showdown,” while Wired called it a “battle for OpenAI’s soul.”
Questions about Altman’s honesty have dogged him for years. His trustworthiness was recently the subject of a 16,000-word New Yorker article. OpenAI’s board members cited his “candor” in removing him as the firm’s CEO in 2023. Its first chief scientist has said Altman “exhibits a consistent pattern of lying.” On X, Musk has called Altman a “swindler” and “Scam Altman.”
The issue continues to loom ahead of an initial public offering for the ChatGPT maker, which is expected to take place before the end of this year.
Musk’s lawsuit, first filed in 2024, has piled on to this narrative.
As Musk tells it, his name and time — and about $40 million in contributions over the years — were crucial to making the nonprofit viable. In 2015, the two co-founded the venture devoted to developing safe artificial intelligence technology meant to benefit all of humanity. Musk came up with the name “OpenAI” and helped poach Ilya Sutskever from DeepMind, the Google-owned endeavor that OpenAI saw as a for-profit rival.
Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman got greedy, Musk alleges. The two circumvented the Tesla CEO to build a for-profit arm of the organization, which partnered with Microsoft, he said. That betrayal created a “for-profit, market-paralyzing gorgon” that effectively became a “subsidiary of Microsoft” on the back of Musk’s generosity, the lawsuit says.
The story told by Altman and OpenAI in court filings is very different.
In their version of events, Musk’s lawsuit is nothing more than an attempt to hobble OpenAI while his own company, xAI, lags far behind, they say.
They say Musk had agreed that OpenAI needed a for-profit arm to fund the computing power needed to advance its mission. When other OpenAI executives and board members refused to give Musk the control he demanded, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO quit the board, OpenAI says.
The case has shed new light on OpenAI’s origins
The litigation has produced a treasure trove of emails, depositions, and other records that offer a rare and rich look at OpenAI’s origins.
The records illustrate how Musk, Altman, and Brockman were driven to create a publicly beneficial counterweight to DeepMind, which they feared would be too powerful in the hands of a private company. They also show that Musk was involved in building a relationship between OpenAI and Microsoft — and, in fact, preferred it over Amazon as a partner. (Microsoft, for its part, has said it didn’t know anything about the early beefs between everyone and shouldn’t be held responsible for any promises anyone made.)
The records also show the messy sniping, backroom politics, hurt feelings, and ballooning egos that emerged as OpenAI grew.
In a September 2017 journal entry, obtained by Musk’s lawyers, Brockman appeared to muse about ousting Musk and making $1 billion for himself. In another entry two months later, he appeared to acknowledge that transforming OpenAI’s corporate structure could be viewed as deceptive.
See more on the Musk v. Altman trial
“it’d be wrong to steal the non-profit from him. to convert to a b-corp without him,” Brockman wrote. “that’d be pretty morally bankrupt. and he’s really not an idiot.”
Altman says he’s ready to tell his side of the story in a public courtroom. In a recent podcast interview, he said Musk was “insane” for bringing the lawsuit and said he worried he’d drop it before trial.
“My fear at this point is he decides to drop the case right before trial, and we don’t get to do all this,” Altman said. “But I am happy to explain all this to the world and have this chapter behind us.”
The ghosts of Sam Altman’s past
In addition to Musk, Altman, and Brockman, the witness list includes powerful executives who can testify about palace intrigue at OpenAI.
Shivon Zilis, the mother of several of Musk’s children and a former OpenAI board member, and Jared Birchall, his right-hand man, may testify about his contributions to the firm’s finances and nonprofit mission. Sutskever is expected to tell the jury about OpenAI’s early days. Bret Taylor, OpenAI’s chair, is expected to talk about what its nonprofit structure looks like now.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and CTO Kevin Scott are both expected to testify about the software giant’s collaboration with OpenAI. The jury is also expected to hear testimony from Mira Murati, the nonprofit’s former CTO, who now has her own AI lab, about “Microsoft’s support of OpenAI during Mr. Altman’s November 2023 firing and subsequent rehiring,” according to a court filing.
Since Musk sued Altman over two years ago, xAI swallowed Musk’s social media company, X, and then became a subsidiary of SpaceX, which filed for an initial public offering. The money could help Musk with his AI ambitions.
While Musk’s lawsuit accused OpenAI of effectively becoming a for-profit subsidiary of Microsoft, the relationship between the two companies has become more complicated. In search of more funding, OpenAI has struck deals with Amazon and other companies, effectively diversifying the tech giants that have a stake in its success.
More importantly, OpenAI has gone through the reorganization that Musk sought to stop. In October, it completed its recapitalization, which restructured its for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation while leaving its nonprofit in charge.
Musk has asked Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to effectively sideline OpenAI in the AI arms race and ensure it stays neutral. He wants the judge to reverse OpenAI’s corporate transformation, kick Altman and Brockman out of the organization’s leadership, and disgorge it of “all ill-gotten gains” from its for-profit operations.
Gonzalez Rogers said she’ll determine the remedies at a later stage if the jury finds Altman, Brockman, and OpenAI liable in the trial.
If a jury finds Altman not liable for the allegations Musk has brought against him, then it would demonstrate that nine ordinary people in California, at least, would have found him pretty trustworthy.
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