Sam Altman, OpenAI chief executive officer (CEO), testified that Tesla CEO Elon Musk supported OpenAI's shift to a for-profit model on the condition that he would have control of OpenAI. Altman stressed that Musk made a "hair-raising" demand that even included a plan to hand OpenAI over to his children.
Altman appeared as a witness on the 12th local time at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in Oakland and said this. When asked whether Musk opposed plans to make OpenAI for-profit, he answered, "The exact opposite," according to major foreign media, including the Financial Times (FT).
Earlier, Musk filed a $134.0 billion (198 trillion won) damages lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman, and the related trial has been underway since early this month.
Altman said, "I did not make any promises to Musk regarding OpenAI's corporate structure." He argued that both the management at the time and Musk agreed that the organization had to convert into a for-profit corporations to raise funds to secure the computing resources needed for developing high-performance artificial intelligence (AI).
He then testified that Musk also took part in discussions on establishing OpenAI's for-profit entity at the time and demanded that he secure 90% equity. As a reason he had to have control, Musk cited, "I am the most famous," and said, "If I just post one tweet, (OpenAI's) value will skyrocket in an instant," according to Altman's testimony.
Altman said, "There was a particularly spine-chilling moment," adding, "When co-founders asked Musk, 'What happens to (OpenAI) control if you die?,' Musk said, 'I haven't thought deeply about it, but control could pass to my kids.'"
He added that between late 2018 and early 2019, when a for-profit subsidiary was established, he asked Musk whether he was willing to invest, but "he declined, saying he only works at companies he can completely control."
He went on to criticize Musk for introducing a factory-style corporations culture into the AI lab, which he said hurt morale. Musk, he said, forced a management style ill-suited to an AI lab that requires psychological safety, such as ranking engineers and scientists and demanding that low performers be fired. He said, "After Musk left the organization, members' morale improved."
In 2024, Musk filed a $134.0 billion damages lawsuit, saying Altman broke a promise to "run OpenAI as a nonprofit" and is pursuing profit. Musk agreed with the philosophy of "developing AI for all humanity" in 2015 and invested tens of millions of dollars when OpenAI was founded, but he now claims he was deceived because OpenAI later abandoned its early mission and began pursuing profit, including by taking investment from Microsoft (MS).
Musk resigned from OpenAI's board in Feb. 2018, a few years before OpenAI launched ChatGPT and shook up the AI market, and he also disposed of all his investment equity. OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, and Musk founded AI startup xAI the following July.