OpenAI says Elon Musk wanted full control of company by merging it with Tesla

New Delhi,UPDATED: Mar 6, 2024 09:26 IST

When OpenAI's revolutionary chatbot ChatGPT gained popularity in 2022, few people knew that Elon Musk was also a part of the company during its inception. Musk worked with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and other founders for a couple of years when ChatGPT wasn't a for-profit company. In 2018, Musk left the company and also forego all his stake in it. However, the reasons behind his departure are still not clear. While many report that Musk had left ChatGPT as his other companies were also working on AI, others believe there is more to the story. And now, OpenAI has shed some light on the reason behind Musk leaving the company.

OpenAI says Elon Musk wanted full control

OpenAI, responding to Musk's lawsuit against the company, said that Elon Musk wanted "absolute control" of the company. The company, in a blog post titled Elon Musk and Open AI, said that they "intend to move to dismiss all of Elon’s claims." Musk had recently sued OpenAI for becoming a for-profit company, thereby allegedly abandoning its original mission.

In its blog post reacting to these claims, OpenAI noted that they realised in 2017 that in order to build AGI, they would need a lot more capital than what they currently had.

"We all understood we were going to need a lot more capital to succeed at our mission—billions of dollars per year, which was far more than any of us, especially Elon, thought we’d be able to raise as the non-profit. We and Elon recognized a for-profit entity would be necessary to acquire those resources."

The company then added that as they talked about a for-profit structure, Musk wanted the company to merge with Tesla or get full control. Following this, he left the company and said that he would himself make a relevant competitor to Google/DeepMind.

Why Did Musk leave OpenAI?

OpenAI explained further in the blog post that in late 2017, OpenAI and Elon Musk jointly decided to take the mission forward by establishing a for-profit entity.

Elon sought majority equity, initial board control, and the position of CEO. In the middle of these discussions, funding was halted, and Reid Hoffman stepped in to cover salaries and operations.

Agreement on for-profit terms with Elon proved challenging for OpenAI, as they believed it contradicted the mission to allow any individual absolute control. Elon then proposed merging OpenAI into Tesla.

In February 2018, Elon forwarded an email suggesting OpenAI should "attach to Tesla as its cash cow," stating it was the best way to compete with Google. Elon eventually left OpenAI in February 2018, citing a 0% success probability.

He then expressed plans to develop an AGI competitor within Tesla and assured the OpenAI team of his support in finding their own path to raising billions. In December 2018, Elon emphasised the need for immediate billions, stating that even raising several hundred million wouldn't be enough.

In the blog post, the company also expressed sadness over how things are progressing with Musk.

OpenAI said, "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."