OpenAI sidang lanjutan: Musk ngamuk, transfusi Tesla, dan rahasia rapat “rumah berhantu”

Original｜Odaily Planet Daily（@OdailyChina）

Author｜Wenser（__@wenser 2010 __）

28 April, Musk and a group of OpenAI executives appeared in federal court in Oakland, California. （See “Musk vs Ultraman, the First Major AI Case in History”）

This man, bearing the title of the world’s richest person, participated in founding OpenAI, then abruptly left, just like Steve Jobs did in his time. With the release of internal information about court hearings, statements on May 6 and 7, and evidence presented, more unknown details involving the trillion-dollar valuation tech giants SpaceX and OpenAI are gradually exposed to the public. Among them are Musk’s various tactics and the self-interest of OpenAI executives.

Odaily Planet Daily has compiled eight stories from publicly available information and court documents, providing readers with a behind-the-scenes look at this “biggest AI trial in history,” involving a settlement of up to 134 billion USD.

Insider One: Musk invests 38 million USD in startup capital, OpenAI executive Greg Brockman “earns” 30 billion USD in equity

In the second week of Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI, co-founder and president Greg Brockman and his personal diaries from 2015 to 2023 appeared in California court as witnesses and evidence. Musk’s lawyer Steven Molo quickly uncovered a “small flaw” — compared to Musk’s actual investment of 38 million USD supporting OpenAI’s founding and early development, Brockman claimed he had not invested a single penny. Yet, with OpenAI’s latest funding round valuation of 825 billion USD, his personal equity is worth about 30 billion USD.

Brockman’s diaries also reveal his “wealth ambitions”—including:

• “Financially, what will take me to $1B?”
• “It would be nice to be making the billions.” / “We’ve been thinking that maybe we should just flip to a for-profit. Making the money for us sounds great and all.”
• “Can’t see us turning this into a for-profit without a very nasty fight… It’d be wrong to steal the non-profit from him. That’d be pretty morally bankrupt… and he’s really not an idiot. His story will correctly be that we weren’t honest with him in the end about still wanting to do the for-profit just without him.”
• Even more, he wrote, “This is our only chance to get rid of Musk… Let me make 1 billion USD.”

Although Brockman claimed some scenarios were hypothetical after a board expulsion of Musk, he was not exactly indifferent to fame and fortune.

The emphasis on this point is because Brockman previously promised to donate 100,000 USD to the OpenAI nonprofit foundation, a promise never fulfilled; when asked whether he wanted to fund the nonprofit or become a billionaire through OpenAI, he responded generously that “having 1 billion USD in stock is already satisfying,” but when Musk’s lawyer Molo asked why he wouldn’t donate the remaining 290 billion USD in stock to OpenAI’s nonprofit, he was speechless.

By comparison, Brockman had previously invested 471 million USD in his former company Stripe and held shares in cloud provider Corweave, which is one of OpenAI’s partners. As a co-founder with technical equity, he became a hot topic of public debate.

Insider Two: Former OpenAI board member met Musk during team-building, then accepted sperm donation and fathered four children

On May 7, Beijing time, Shivon Zilis, a former OpenAI board member and mother of four children with Musk, also testified in court.

She stated that she first met Musk during a company team-building event at OpenAI in 2016, and subsequently served on the board for several years.

After deciding to become a single mother and have children, Musk, who has always championed “human-centeredism,” offered to donate sperm as a donor for her IVF procedures.

Regarding their current relationship, Zilis said, “We are now in a romantic relationship, and Musk visits regularly.” She denied being Musk’s “secret agent” or “intelligence channel,” while Musk referred to her as a “close advisor.”

After breaking ties with other co-founders of OpenAI in 2018, she continued to act as a communication bridge; it was only after Musk founded the rival xAI in 2023 that she officially left the OpenAI board.

Insider Three: OpenAI’s original name “AI Manhattan Project,” later renamed by Musk himself

In May 2015, Sam Altman, then president of YC, sent Musk an email proposing that Y Combinator lead a “Manhattan Project-style AI laboratory.” （Odaily Planet Daily notes: referencing Oppenheimer’s atomic bomb project.)

Ultimately, Musk personally named this new AI lab “Open AI Institute,” abbreviated as “OpenAI” （drawing from open-source philosophy) — a name embodying OpenAI’s core principles: openness, transparency, and service to all humanity.

Looking back, the development of AGI and the awkward situation of the court case suggest that Sam Altman might have foreseen that OpenAI and large AI models would become, like atomic bombs, tools initially hoped to “end wars,” but ultimately turning into “weapons of mass destruction.” Now that OpenAI has fully transitioned into a profit-driven company planning an IPO, it diverges from its original open-source spirit.

Insider Four: Musk “poached” former Google researcher Ilya Sutskever with a phone call to join OpenAI

In 2015, Ilya Sutskever, then acquired by Google, received a “cold email” from Sam Altman （Odaily Planet Daily notes: an email sent directly to someone with no prior interaction）, inviting him to dinner with Brockman and Musk to discuss founding a new AI research organization (later OpenAI). Altman emphasized that the goal was to develop beneficial AGI for humanity and to avoid monopolization by a few giants.

At that time, Sutskever had been working at Google for nearly three years and was highly regarded by Google Brain and DeepMind founders like Demis Hassabis, who tried to persuade him to stay.

Despite shared ideals, Sutskever hesitated due to concerns about the new organization. Musk called him on the day OpenAI officially launched, convincing him to join, thus bringing a foundational figure to early OpenAI.

Unfortunately, in November 2023, Sutskever, a board member, participated in the “removal of Sam Altman as CEO” over AI safety and commercialization issues, ending with Altman leading the board, Sutskever apologizing publicly, and resigning from the board. In May 2024, he officially left OpenAI, with Altman publicly thanking him: “Without Ilya, there would be no OpenAI today.”

Insider Five: OpenAI nearly became a Tesla subsidiary; OpenAI employees once worked for Tesla for free

This information comes from Shivon Zilis and Brockman.

According to Zilis, around 2017, two years after OpenAI’s founding, Musk and Altman faced resource shortages—computing power and funding—and brainstormed ways to secure more GPU resources.

One day, Musk proposed integrating OpenAI into Tesla as a subsidiary, turning it into an internal AI lab to seek more funding and resources. He also prepared a Tesla board seat for Altman. However, after strong resistance from Altman and Brockman, the plan was abandoned. Subsequently, Musk gradually parted ways with the core OpenAI team, officially severing ties in 2018.

Additionally, Brockman stated that Musk had previously assigned several OpenAI employees to Tesla’s autonomous driving team “for free,” including former OpenAI researcher and now AI industry heavyweight Andrej Karpathy.

Insider Six: Musk used a Tesla Model 3 Founders Edition to “bribe” Brockman and Sutskever

In July 2017, just before the “haunted house meeting” over OpenAI’s majority equity control, Musk emailed some executives: “As a thank you for your contributions to OpenAI, I want to give each of you a Founder Series Model 3. These are the first produced, not yet available to the public.”

In August 2017, Sutskever mentioned this in a message to Brockman: “At least we’re getting our Teslas.” / “Will a Model 3 make you accept massively unfavorable terms?” At that time, OpenAI’s top executives were already prepared for Musk’s “sweet talk.”

Brockman also testified in court that Musk’s “Tesla car reward” was not due to work performance but was a way to gain more influence over OpenAI, essentially a form of “flattery” or “bribery” (Odaily Planet Daily notes: even a covert form of bribery). The cars were delivered in late August 2017, just before the meeting on OpenAI’s profit-sharing.

Interestingly, as a goodwill gift, Sutskever commissioned a painting of a Tesla Model 3 and presented it to Musk at the “haunted house” meeting.

Insider Seven: At the haunted house meeting, Musk lost control and nearly “hit someone”

In August 2017, after OpenAI defeated top human players in Dota 2, Musk suggested celebrating and invited the team to a party at his newly purchased 47-acre mansion in Hillsborough, California, worth 23 million USD.

Because the mansion was old, poorly maintained, and eerie (like a Gatsby-style haunted house), Musk called it the “haunted mansion,” warning everyone in advance: “You might see party carnage.”

Brockman recalled that besides the OpenAI team, Musk’s then-girlfriend Amber Heard was present at first, pouring whiskey for everyone before leaving. The atmosphere was initially friendly, but when discussions about “OpenAI’s shift to a for-profit entity” and control rights arose, things changed—Musk suddenly stood up, stormed around the table, and became very angry. Brockman said, “I really thought he was going to hit me.”

Finally, Musk grabbed the painting of Sutskever and announced he would cut off funding unless Brockman and Sutskever resigned, then stormed out, ending the party in chaos.

Insider Eight: Musk “endured humiliation” to seize control of OpenAI, just to realize his “Mars dream”?

During the trial, when asked why Musk was so determined to gain control of OpenAI, Brockman said Musk told him that he needed 80 billion USD to realize his grand plan of building a city on Mars.

Meanwhile, SpaceX’s IPO was also underway, with a fundraising target of about 75 billion USD, close to what Brockman mentioned.

After eight years, the root of Musk’s love-hate relationship with OpenAI seems to be that he needs OpenAI as a key vessel to feed SpaceX. If he had succeeded in controlling OpenAI from the start, he might have transformed it into a profit-oriented entity like Altman and Brockman. The difference is, Musk might not have needed to create xAI and merge it into SpaceX later.

However, recent news indicates Musk has shifted to collaborating with OpenAI’s biggest competitor, Anthropic, betting his existing computing resources on the latter, in a strategic move to realize his ultimate dream—landing on Mars. See “Musk and Anthropic, heading to space to find electricity”.

Finally, we conclude with a court scene from this “AI field’s first case,” involving the highest compensation of 134 billion USD.

According to documents submitted by OpenAI’s lawyers, two days before the trial, Musk texted Brockman to inquire about settlement willingness. When Brockman suggested both sides should drop their claims, Musk sharply retorted: “This weekend, you and Sam will become the most hated people in America. If you insist, so be it.”

Although Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ultimately did not accept this message as evidence, the current situation suggests that the “lawsuit” between Musk and OpenAI is far from over.