This article originally appeared on Business Insider.
OpenAI responded publicly Elon Musk's lawsuit on Tuesday in a blog post that revealed new details about Musk's relationship with the company.
“We're saddened that it's come to this with someone we've deeply admired — someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we'd fail, started a competitor, and then sued us when we started to make progress.” significant towards OpenAI's mission without it,” reads the blog postwhich published a series of internal emails between Musk and OpenAI executives dating between 2015 and 2018.
Musk's lawyers and OpenAI representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
In his lawsuit filed Friday, Musk accused OpenAI and its leaders of abandoning their open source principles by partnering with Microsoft. He argued that the company's 2019 pivot in a “limited profit” the split constitutes a breach of its original 2015 contract as a non-profit organization.
of CEO of Tesla stepped down from OpenAI's board in 2018, but Musk's lawyers said in the lawsuit that he continued to contribute to the company through 2020.
In the first of the emails released Tuesday by OpenAI, written in November 2015, Musk wrote OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and the company's president, Greg Brockman, that the company should seek funding that equates to a “number much larger than $100 million to avoid sounding hopeless compared to what Google or Facebook are spending.”
“I think we should say we're starting with a $1 billion funding commitment,” Musk wrote. “That's true. I'll cover anything that someone else doesn't offer.”
Commentary written by Altman, Brockman and other OpenAI executives in the blog post says how Musk — who at the time was sitting in OpenAI Board — and the rest of the company's executives discussed the best financial path forward, it became clear in late 2017 among all parties involved that a for-profit structure was the only way to ensure the company could secure sufficient funds to its pursuit of the development of general artificial intelligence.
“Elon wanted majority equity, initial board control and to be CEO. In the midst of these discussions, he withheld funding. Reid Hoffman bridged the gap to cover salaries and operations,” the post said. “We could not agree to the terms of a win with Elon because we felt it was against the mission for any individual to have absolute control over OpenAI. He then suggested instead merging OpenAI with Tesla.”
The post goes on to highlight a February 2018 email chain sent by Musk to Brockman and OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskeverin which an unnamed third party suggests the most promising path forward for OpenAI is to “join Tesla as its cash cow.”
In the follow-up email, Musk writes that the unnamed author of the suggestion was “exactly right,” adding: “Tesla is the only road that can even hope to hold a candle to Google. Even then, the probability of being a counterweight so Google is small, it's just not zero.”
“Elon quickly chose to leave OpenAI, saying our probability of success was 0 and that he planned to build an AGI competitor within Tesla,” the blog post said. “When he left at the end of February 2018, he told our team that he was supportive of us finding our way to raise billions of dollars. In December 2018, Elon sent us an email saying, 'Even raising a few hundred million is not it will be enough”. This needs billions a year immediately or forget it.'
The last drama between Musk and Altman, etc. al. has been revealed just weeks after OpenAI finalized a deal valuing the company at $80 billion.
Although he has made several releases on OpenAI since leaving, Musk recently doubled down on his public questioning of the legality and ethics of OpenAI's financial structure, writing in a post on X in mid-February that he had been offered shares in “different points, but that it seemed unethical/illegal to accept” and in interviews he claimed that OpenAI “it wouldn't exist without me.”
Tuesday's blog post, which say OpenAI intends to move to refute all of Musk's claims, ending with assurances that, despite Musk's accusations, OpenAI is “focused on advancing our mission” and has “a long way to go.”
“As we continue to make our tools better and better, we're excited to deploy these systems so they empower every individual.”
Axel Springer, the parent company of Business Insider, has a global deal to let OpenAI train its models on its media brands' reporting.