OpenAI has filed court documents showing that Elon Musk, who is currently suing the company over its shift to a for-profit model, previously attempted to gain majority control of OpenAI as a for-profit entity in 2017. According to emails cited in the filing and reproduced in this blog post, Musk demanded 50-60% equity ownership, the CEO position, and board control of a proposed for-profit structure he himself had incorporated as “Open Artificial Intelligence Technologies, Inc.”
The documents reveal that OpenAI’s leadership, including Sam Altman and Ilya Sutskever, initially considered accepting Musk’s terms but ultimately rejected them in September 2017, expressing concern that giving him “unilateral absolute control” would conflict with the organization’s mission to ensure artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits humanity broadly. After this rejection, Musk suggested merging OpenAI into Tesla in January 2018, warning the company would fail without “billions per year” in funding, before resigning as co-chair in February 2018.
The filing comes in response to Musk’s lawsuit from August challenging OpenAI’s transition to a “capped-profit” model. OpenAI maintains that Musk’s opposition to its new structure contradicts his own previous attempts to establish it as a for-profit venture. The company states that Musk declined multiple offers to take equity in OpenAI LP after its restructuring and later founded xAI, a competing artificial intelligence company, in March 2023.