In This Article:
(Bloomberg) -- OpenAI fired back at a lawsuit filed against it by Elon Musk in a blog post Tuesday, using the billionaire’s own emails to show he backed the company’s plans to become a for-profit business and that he insisted it raise “billions” of dollars to be relevant compared with Google.Musk filed the lawsuit last week against OpenAI, Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman, alleging the startup had strayed from its mission to build responsible AI and that it had become beholden to Microsoft Corp., its largest investor. In the post, OpenAI said that Musk was lashing out after trying and failing to make the company part of Tesla Inc.
Most Read from Bloomberg
-
One of the Most Infamous Trades on Wall Street Is Roaring Back
-
Stock Rally Stalls in Countdown to Inflation Data: Markets Wrap
“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 the post, which was co-authored by several of OpenAI’s co-founders, including Altman, Brockman and Ilya Sutskever.
The post also reproduced emails Musk had sent to people at the company, demonstrating that the billionaire had endorsed OpenAI’s fundraising efforts. “This needs billions per year immediately or forget it,” Musk wrote in one email, according to OpenAI.
Listen and subscribe to Elon, Inc. on Apple, Spotify, iHeart and the Bloomberg Terminal.
OpenAI, as a non-profit, raised less than $45 million from Musk and more than $90 million from other donors, according to the blog post. Musk pushed the company to be far more ambitious in its fundraising, the emails show. At the outset, Altman and Brockman planned to raise $100 million, OpenAI said, but Musk objected, saying the number should be higher.
We need to go with a much bigger number than $100M to avoid sounding hopeless relative to what Google or Facebook are spending. I think we should say that we are starting with a $1B funding commitment. This is real. I will cover whatever anyone else doesn't provide.
Musk alleges in his suit that the startup’s close relationship with Microsoft has undermined its original mission of creating open-source technology free from undue corporate influence. “To this day, OpenAI Inc.’s website continues to profess that its charter is to ensure that AGI ‘benefits all of humanity,’” the lawsuit said, referring to artificial general intelligence, a powerful type of AI that doesn’t yet exist. “In reality, however, OpenAI Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft.”