OpenAI releases emails with Elon Musk; 'We're sad that it's come to this'

The leadership team at OpenAI  has released a set of private emails with Elon Musk in response to a lawsuit he filed against the company and its CEO Sam Altman. 

Musk filed a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court last week which alleges that he invested in OpenAI with the agreement that it would remain a nonprofit developing technology for the benefit of the public. The lawsuit goes on to say that as the company's relationship with Microsoft has grown, OpenAI has ‘perverted’ its original mission and is now aimed at pursuing profits. 

Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X, formerly Twitter, Elon Musk attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre on June 16, 2023 in Paris, France. 

The leadership at OpenAI says they intend to "move to dismiss all of Elon's claims" in regards to the company, its path forward and its founding goals. 

"We're sad that it's come to this with someone whom we’ve deeply admired—someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we would fail, started a competitor, and then sued us when we started making meaningful progress towards OpenAI’s mission without him," the company said in a statement. 

The emails in question stem from conversations about the company's goals and protocols that began as early as 2015. The company states that Greg Brockman and Sam Altman planned to raise around $100 million to fund the company, but Musk suggested they increase that to $1 billion in order to "avoid sounding hopeless." In the same email, shared below, Musk wrote that he would ‘cover’ whatever funds were needed to hit the fundraising mark. 

Two years later, the founders realized that they would need significantly more capital to succeed, and they chose to create a for-profit side of the company. The company says when this idea was floated, Musk requested majority equity in the company, control of the board and to be placed as CEO. 

"We couldn’t agree to terms on a for-profit with Elon because we felt it was against the mission for any individual to have absolute control over OpenAI," the statement said. 

At this point, Musk also suggested tying OpenAI to Tesla in order to increase cash flow. That idea was eventually nixed, and Musk announced plans to create an AI competitor attached to Tesla. 

The key argument made in the company's statement is that Musk knew the company needed to move towards a for-profit model, and he also supported the idea of keeping some of OpenAI's science private rather than sharing it directly with the public. 

OpenAI says that to date only $45 million has been provided to the company from Musk and an additional $90 million has been raised from other sources.