The war of words between tech billionaire Elon Musk and the artificial intelligence company OpenAI is heating up.
In a Tuesday blog post, OpenAI cast doubt on claims Mr. Musk made in a lawsuit last week, when he accused the company of breaking a contract by chasing profit and partnering with tech giant Microsoft.
OpenAI’s post revealed private emails between the company and the billionaire, showing that Mr. Musk pushed the company to make more money.
When the company was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit, OpenAI had a $100 million funding goal, which Mr. Musk said was too little.
“We need to go with a much bigger number than $100M to avoid sounding hopeless,” he wrote. “I think we should say that we are starting with a $1B funding commitment. … I will cover whatever anyone else doesn’t provide.”
According to OpenAI, Mr. Musk provided only $45 million of his promised funding compared with the $90 million others gave.
The Tesla owner and OpenAI agreed that it needed to become a for-profit company, but disagreements popped up during negotiations. According to OpenAI, Mr. Musk wanted full control.
“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 letter continues. “He then suggested instead merging OpenAI into Tesla.”
After executives rejected Mr. Musk’s idea of a merger with his electric vehicle company, he left OpenAI, saying that it had no chance of success.
Tuesday’s blog post casts Mr. Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI in a different light. The billionaire sued the company in California court last week, saying OpenAI’s $13 billion partnership with Microsoft is a violation of the company’s founding charter. Mr. Musk has proposed a jury trial and wants OpenAI founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman to pay back profit they received from Microsoft.
The lawsuit comes as Mr. Musk promotes his own AI project, xAI. On top of marketing the technology on X, the platform he owns, he has taken to mocking other AI products. Most recently, he accused Google’s Gemini AI of racism for generating images of people of color in inaccurate settings.
• Vaughn Cockayne can be reached at vcockayne@washingtontimes.com.
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