OpenAI is firing back at Musk, claiming he wants OpenAI for profit

OpenAI returned fire On Friday, billionaire Elon Musk released a series of emails and texts that the company claims show Musk’s claims against him are misleading.

Musk has had a legal battle with OpenAI continues for month nowessentially accusing the company of abandoning its original non-profit mission to make the fruits of AI research accessible to all. Things got tense last month after Musk’s legal team filed a lawsuit command Terminating OpenAI’s ongoing operations transition from a nonprofit organization to a nonprofit corporation.

OpenAI says Musk’s complaints are baseless and just a case of sour grapes.

Back in 2015, Musk floated the idea of ​​OpenAI with both a non-commercial and a commercial component, emails and texts published by OpenAI show. OpenAI eventually started as a non-profit organization, but ran into financial problems after a few years.

On June 13, 2017, according to a stock exchange published by OpenAI, Musk proposed to merge OpenAI with a hardware startup — perhaps chip company Cerebras. Several members of the OpenAI leadership agreed with the messages, and OpenAI began a path that President Greg Brockman called “AI research + hardware for profit.”

Musk claimed majority equity, OpenAI claims – between 50% and 60%. And he created a body structure where he would “unequivocally have primary control over the company” and appoint its CEO.

Musk went so far as to create a public benefit corporation, Open Artificial Intelligence Technologies, Inc., registered in Delaware. But OpenAI management rejected Musk’s terms.

Musk later recommended turning OpenAI into Tesla, an electric car company with a $1 billion budget that would “grow exponentially.” OpenAI management also rejected this offer.

It was at this point, in 2018, that Musk resigned from OpenAI and largely cut ties with the C-suite. OpenAI claims it has offered Musk capital in its for-profit wing several times, but Musk has always declined.

“You can’t sue your way (artificial general intelligence,)” OpenAI said in a statement. “We have great respect for Elon’s accomplishments and thank him for his early contributions to OpenAI, but he must compete in the marketplace, not the courtroom.”

Musk formulated his answer to OpenAI, xAI, last year. Soon the company was dissolved Grokan AI model that now powers a number of features on Musk’s social network X (formerly known as Twitter). xAI also offers an API that allows customers to build Grok into third-party applications, platforms and services.

In a complaint filed late last month, Musk’s lawyers allege that OpenAI is depriving xAI of capital by taking promises from investors not to fund it and the competition. Financial Times in October informed OpenAI asked its investors final funding round Avoid funding any competitor of OpenAI, including xAI.

Of course, xAI has had no trouble raising money lately. Last month the firm closed $6 billion round reported With prominent investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Fidelity. With nearly $12 billion in the bank, xAI is one of the best-funded AI companies in the world.

Musk’s injunction request also alleges that OpenAI and its close collaborator and investor Microsoft are illegally sharing proprietary data and resources. Google is also said to be he called Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI, particularly for research into the two organizations’ cloud computing arrangements.

OpenAI is under pressure to quickly complete its commercial transition. according to Bloomberg, for investors final funding round If OpenAI does not become a non-profit organization within two years, they will be able to get their money back.