I know what you’re thinking: Oh great, another story about something Elon Musk just did.
You’re not wrong.
This time he’s suing his old friend and former partner Sam Altman over the direction that OpenAI has taken, which deviates from the non-profit that Elon Musk helped co-found.
In 2015 Sam Altman and Greg Brockman approached Elon Musk about co-founding and funding an AI research non-profit with the goal of developing artificial general intelligence for the “benefit of humanity.”
Fast-forward 9 years and those good intentions have been thrown away, and OpenAI’s for-profit arm is now valued at $90 Billion dollars with a capital B, and Elon Musk has gone out and founded his own AI research startup called appropriately enough xAI.
It’s not really clear what Elon Musk hopes to get out of suing Sam Altman and OpenAI. In his suit he says he’s suing for the profits from the for-profit part of OpenAI, but I’m guessing Microsoft, who owns 49% of OpenAI, will have something to say about that.
Also, it’s interesting that Elon Musk didn’t name Microsoft as a defendant in the lawsuit.
I guess when you’re Elon Musk, the richest man in the world with a fortune estimated to be worth $210 billion dollars, you can still be scared of Microsoft, which has a market cap of #3.07 trillion dollars!
Elon Musk sues OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman over contract breach