Elon Musk backs down. The mercurial and eccentric billionaire has decided to withdraw the lawsuit he had filed against OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, among others. In it, he accused the firm he co-founded of abandoning its purpose of pursuing the development of artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity to seek profit. His thesis had become evident after the company revealed emails in which the magnate stressed the need to raise enormous amounts of resources to develop the new technology. Meanwhile, Musk has launched his own artificial intelligence firm, xAI, which has reached a valuation of $24 billion in less than a year, including a financing round in which he has raised $6 billion.
Musk presented his 46-page lawsuit plus annexes before the Superior Court of California in San Francisco County on February 29. He was asking for a jury trial and for OpenAI’s co-founders to repay any profits made from the company. Now, he has filed a form in which his own attorneys voluntarily request the dismissal of the lawsuit without explaining why he is taking that step. He does so just the day after being aggressive against OpenAI and Apple for the agreement signed between both companies.
OpenAI had also requested the dismissal of the lawsuit. In his response, he called Musk’s claims “incoherent,” “frivolous,” “extraordinary,” and “a fiction.” Before, through a publication on your own website, The company disseminated some of the messages exchanged with the magnate at the beginning of the firm that he helped found and from which he later distanced himself.
“Elon said we were due to announce an initial funding commitment of $1 billion for OpenAI. In total, the nonprofit has raised less than $45 million from Elon and more than $90 million from other donors,” OpenAI said. The firm claimed that at the time of its founding, Greg Brockman and Sam Altman had initially planned to raise $100 million. “Elon said in an email: ‘We have to go with a much larger number than $100 million to avoid sounding desperate… I think we should say we’re starting with a $1 billion funding commitment.’ I will cover what anyone else does not contribute,” he said in one of those messages.
Musk wanted control
OpenAI relates that in early 2017 everyone at OpenAI realized that developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) was going to require large amounts of computing. “We started to calculate how much computing an AGI might require. We all understood that we were going to need a lot more capital to succeed in our mission: billions of dollars a year, which was much more than any of us, especially Elon, thought we would be able to raise as a nonprofit. . Elon and we recognized that a for-profit entity would be necessary to obtain those resources. While we were discussing a for-profit structure to drive the mission, Elon wanted us to merge with Tesla or he wanted full control. Elon abandoned OpenAI, saying that there had to be a relevant competitor to Google/DeepMind and that he was going to do it himself. “He said that he would support us to find our own path,” OpenAI assured.
According to that explanation, Musk agreed that it was necessary to create a for-profit entity to capture these resources. “Elon wanted a majority stake, initial control of the board of directors and to be CEO. In the midst of these discussions, he withheld funding,” OpenAI explained. “We couldn’t reach an agreement with Elon on a for-profit company because we believed it was against OpenAI’s mission for any one person to have complete control of the company. He then proposed merging OpenAI with Tesla instead. In early February 2018, Elon forwarded us an email suggesting that OpenAI should ‘join Tesla as their cash cow,’ he continued.
Musk soon chose to abandon OpenAI, saying in another message that his chance of success was zero, and that he planned to build a competitor within Tesla. “When he left at the end of February 2018, he told our team that he supported us finding our own path to raising billions of dollars. In December 2018, Elon sent us an email saying: ‘Even raising several hundred million won’t be enough. This needs billions a year immediately or forget it,” OpenAI said.
That and other messages exposed Elon Musk. “We are saddened to have come to this with someone we deeply admire, someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we would fail, founded a competitor, and then sued us when we started making significant progress toward OpenAI’s mission without him.” , he concluded, providing copies of the emails sent by Musk.
Musk’s lawyers do not explain whether it was the limited chances of success that led him to withdraw the lawsuit. The brief submitted to the court comes the day after Musk tweeted a series of messages criticizing OpenAI and its handling of user data following the agreement by which Apple integrates ChatGPT with the personal assistant Siri. “If Apple integrates OpenAI at the OS (operating system) level, then Apple devices will be banned in my companies. “It is an unacceptable security breach,” Musk wrote.
Musk announced the founding of his own artificial intelligence company in July 2023. He launched the first version of his Grok generative artificial intelligence chat on his social network X in November, and has since been introducing advanced versions of that tool, which aims to compete with OpenAI’s successful ChatGPT. The tycoon began developing artificial intelligence tools at Tesla, but then said that if he did not have a larger stake (he claimed 25% in the company) he would consider taking AI and robotics developments outside of Tesla.
Elon Musk faces a decisive shareholder meeting this Thursday at Tesla in which the approval of a multimillion-dollar compensation package for the businessman himself is put to a vote, a replica of the one that was annulled by a judge, and the transfer of the company’s legal domicile from Delaware to Texas. Musk has emerged scalded by Delaware’s seriousness in corporate matters. When he signed the agreement to buy Twitter and then looked for excuses to back out, the company’s lawsuit against him had every sign of succeeding, so in the end Musk gave up and went ahead with the operation. That State was also where the judge annulled his stratospheric remuneration.
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