OpenAI publishes Elon Musk's emails

OpenAI fired back at Elon Musk, who sued the ChatGPT company last week for chasing profit and diverging from its original, nonprofit mission. Tuesday night, OpenAI published several of Musk’s emails from the early days of the company that appear to show Musk acknowledging OpenAI needed to make a ton of money to fund the incredible computing resources needed to power its AI ambitions.

In the emails, parts of which have been redacted, Musk argues that the company stood virtually no chance of building a successful generative AI platform by raising cash alone, and the company needed to find alternate sources of revenue to survive.

In a Nov. 22, 2015, email to CEO Sam Altman, Musk, an OpenAI co-founder, said the company needed to raise much more than US$100 million to “avoid sounding hopeless.” Musk suggested a US$1 billion funding commitment and promised that he would cover whatever did not get raised.

OpenAI in a blog post Tuesday night said Musk never followed through on his promise, committing US$45 million in funding for OpenAI, while other donors raised US$90 million. Lawyers for Musk declined to comment on OpenAI’s claims.

Musk, in a Feb. 1, 2018, email, told company executives that the only path forward for OpenAI was for Tesla, his electric car company, to buy it. The company refused, and Musk left OpenAI later that year.

In December 2018, Musk emailed Altman and other executives that OpenAI would not be relevant “without a dramatic change in execution and resources.”

“This needs billions per year immediately or forget it,” Musk emailed. “I really hope I’m wrong.”

OpenAI executives agreed. In 2019, they formed OpenAI LP, a for-profit entity that exists within the larger company’s structure. That for-profit company took OpenAI from effectively worthless to a valuation of US$90 billion in just a few years — and Altman is largely credited as the mastermind of that plan and the key to the company’s success.

Microsoft has since committed US$13 billion in a close partnership with OpenAI.

Musk’s complaint, filed last week in California state court, said that company and its partnership with Microsoft violated OpenAI’s founding charter, representing a breach of contract. Musk is asking for a jury trial and for the company, Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman to pay back the profit they received from the business.

The company said in its blog post that it has not diverged from its mission, and it would move to dismiss all of Musk’s claims.