Elon Musk became visibly irritated on the witness stand Wednesday as an attorney for OpenAI questioned whether the billionaire backed off his financial commitment to the startup in its early years.<\/p>\n
In his second day testifying at a closely watched trial over his claims that OpenAI betrayed its altruistic mission in pursuit of profit, the world\u2019s richest person was put on the defensive about how much he supported the startup since its founding.<\/p>\n
He had several heated exchanges with William Savitt, who represents OpenAI, about the clarity of the lawyer\u2019s questions, calling them \u201cunfair\u201d and \u201cmisleading\u201d at various points.<\/p>\n
Savitt repeatedly posed what he described as \u201csimple\u201d yes or no questions to Musk, to which Musk would reply that they could not be answered so easily.<\/p>\n
\u2018Trick Me\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cYour questions are not simple,\u201d Musk said at one point. \u201cThey are designed to trick me, essentially.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the lawsuit he filed in 2024, Musk alleged that Sam Altman, OpenAI\u2019s chief executive officer, and Greg Brockman, its president, have enriched themselves by converting the company to a for-profit business with billions of dollars in support from Microsoft Corp. <\/p>\n
OpenAI and Altman have accused Musk of harassment and say the real goal of the lawsuit is to undercut competition with his own startup that he co-founded in 2023, xAI. <\/p>\n
Savitt pressed Musk on how much money he had actually contributed to OpenAI in its early years. Musk had been making quarterly donations and paid the rent on an office building for OpenAI, before he said he \u201clost confidence\u201d in its leadership.<\/p>\n
During that time, Musk and OpenAI made different representations about the scope of his financial support for the nonprofit that he co-founded with Altman, Brockman and Ilya Sutskever.<\/p>\n
When announcing its launch in 2015, the nonprofit said Musk committed to eventually donating as much as $1 billion to its mission to develop artificial intelligence for the \u201cbenefit of humanity.\u201d In a post on X in 2023, Musk wrote that he had donated $100 million.<\/p>\n
\u2018Did You?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of it, you didn\u2019t contribute a billion dollars to OpenAI, did you?\u201d Savitt asked Musk.<\/p>\n
Musk replied that he had been growing concerned with the direction of OpenAI around 2017, and started losing trust in the team. Savitt interjected.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy question to you was simple,\u201d he said, repeating it.<\/p>\n
Musk sidestepped again, and said he contributed his reputation, his ideas and other assets that had non-monetary value: \u201cWithout me, it would not exist.\u201d<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers intervened and told Musk to answer Savitt\u2019s question, which Musk asked to be repeated.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy question was: You didn\u2019t contribute anywhere near $1 billion to OpenAI, yes or no?\u201d Savitt said.<\/p>\n
$38 Million<\/p>\n
\u201cIn strict monetary terms, I contributed $38 million,\u201d Musk said.<\/p>\n
The two have been courtroom rivals before. Savitt, one of the country\u2019s leading corporate litigators, represented Twitter Inc. in its lawsuit to force Musk to follow through on his bid to buy the social media company for $44 billion when he tried to back of the deal in 2022. Musk ultimately conceded before that case reached a trial.<\/p>\n
The stakes in the Oakland trial are high \u2014 maybe even existential \u2014 for OpenAI because of what Musk is seeking: As much as $134 billion in damages and removal of Altman and Brockman from their leadership roles, as well as the unwinding of OpenAI\u2019s for-profit conversion that was completed in October.<\/p>\n
Much of Musk\u2019s testimony so far has been about his falling out with OpenAI\u2019s leaders as they explored strategies to line up sufficient funding to compete with Alphabet Inc.\u2019s Google and other pioneers in the AI space that were operating as for-profits.<\/p>\n
In 2017, he and the other OpenAI co-founders were considering creating a for-profit subsidiary to support research. They contemplated giving Musk a majority interest in the subsidiary, and virtually unequivocal control over its operations. <\/p>\n
He would have had the power to appoint four seats to a 12-member board, while Altman, Brockman and Sutskever would have each received one seat. Musk told jurors the intention was for his majority interest to quickly dilute over time, as more investors were recruited.<\/p>\n
\u2018Final Straw\u2019<\/p>\n
But Musk said the \u201cfinal straw\u201d in his rift with the co-founders came when they seemed to turn on him and voice concerns about the proposal, which never came to fruition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had gone back on what they had agreed on previously,\u201d Musk said. \u201cI felt this was somewhat disingenuous and what they really wanted to do was create a for-profit where they had as much shareholder ownership as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Savitt showed jurors a 2017 email exchange between Musk, Sutskever, Brockman and a few others at OpenAI about these discussions. In the email, Musk expressed a need to \u201cchange course\u201d to keep up with business demands.<\/p>\n
In that same message thread, Musk offered to give free Teslas to Sutskever and others at OpenAI.<\/p>\n
\u2018Full Price\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be fair, I paid full price for the Teslas,\u201d the longtime chief executive officer of the electric car maker said to laughter in the courtroom. \u201cI don\u2019t get a discount or anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Five years after he left OpenAI\u2019s board in 2018, Musk founded xAI as a for-profit company. It was recently acquired by SpaceX as Musk\u2019s rocket maker moves toward an initial public offering.<\/p>\n
OpenAI is also poised for an IPO as its valuation approaches $1 trillion.<\/p>\n
Musk told jurors that OpenAI was established as a nonprofit because he was concerned about the safety of AI and ensuring that the future of the technology would not be controlled solely by companies like Google.<\/p>\n
\u2018Some Safety Risk\u2019<\/p>\n
Savitt asked Musk on Wednesday whether he considered it to be a safety risk for an AI company to operate as a for-profit. Musk said he believes it \u201ccreates some safety risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo xAI suffers from that safety risk?\u201d Savitt asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d Musk replied.<\/p>\n
Musk repeated throughout his testimony that he was not against the idea of a for-profit AI company, but stated his objection to turning a nonprofit into a for-profit enterprise.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s having your cake and eating it too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Savitt posed a number of questions about Musk\u2019s competing loyalties as both an OpenAI board member and his roles at Tesla and Neuralink, both of which are heavily invested in AI.<\/p>\n
The lawyer suggested during questioning that despite Musk\u2019s fiduciary duties to OpenAI, in 2017 he was actually attempting to hire top researchers away from the nonprofit to his other companies. <\/p>\n
Recruited Scientist<\/p>\n
Savitt pointed out that Musk helped recruit OpenAI scientist Andrej Karpathy to Tesla, and showed the jury an email Musk sent to a Neuralink executive saying he had \u201cno problem if you pitch people at OpenAI to work at Neuralink.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe it\u2019s a free world,\u201d Musk said in response. \u201cPeople should have the right to work where they want to work.\u201d <\/p>\n
Mekelburg and Poritz write for Bloomberg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk became visibly irritated on the witness stand Wednesday as an attorney for OpenAI questioned whether the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[31474,1020,202,31473,31471,13359,11816,31472,203,15928,613,11747,4270,581,11141,31040],"class_list":{"0":"post-50895","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-elon-musk","8":"tag-ai-space","9":"tag-company","10":"tag-elon-musk","11":"tag-financial-commitment","12":"tag-for-profit-business","13":"tag-greg-brockman","14":"tag-ilya-sutskever","15":"tag-juror","16":"tag-musk","17":"tag-nonprofit","18":"tag-openai","19":"tag-question","20":"tag-safety","21":"tag-sam-altman","22":"tag-trial","23":"tag-william-savitt"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116494073991399438","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}