How Elon Musk Pressured OpenAI: “They’re Going to Want Me Out”

Elon Musk returned to the stand on Wednesday to share his perspective in the ongoing legal dispute against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman. During cross-examination by OpenAI’s attorneys, Musk was questioned on his attempts to pressure the organization amid a 2017 power struggle that he ultimately lost. It was revealed through emails that during this period, Musk made efforts to recruit OpenAI researchers and ceased the funding he had previously committed to.

As cross-examination commenced, palpable tension filled the courtroom. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers opened the session by admonishing a spectator for photographing Musk. OpenAI’s president and cofounder, Greg Brockman, observed from behind his lawyers, glaring at Musk during his testimony. Musk exhibited visible signs of frustration on the stand, frequently pausing to assert to OpenAI’s attorney, William Savitt, that he found the questions misleading. Savitt’s line of questioning was hampered by objections, technical difficulties, and Musk repeatedly claiming he couldn’t remember vital details regarding OpenAI’s history.

Savitt presented emails from September 2017 involving Musk, Altman, Brockman, and researcher Ilya Sutskever, which discussed the establishment of what would eventually become OpenAI’s for-profit division. In these messages, Musk requested to appoint four members to the board of directors, affording him greater voting power compared to his cofounders, who would collectively have three. “I would unequivocally have initial control of the company, but this will change quickly,” Musk wrote in one email. Sutskever replied, rejecting the proposal due to concerns that it would grant Musk excessive influence.

Prior to these discussions, Musk had frozen payments to OpenAI, which significantly impacted the organization as he was its primary financial supporter. Since 2016, Musk had been providing $5 million every quarter as part of a broader $1 billion commitment made at the launch of the organization. However, he halted these payments in the spring of 2017. In an email from August 2017, Jared Birchall, head of Musk’s family office, inquired if he should continue withholding funds, to which Musk simply responded, “Yes.”

In October 2017, just after Musk lost the power struggle, email communications indicate he was exploring the possibility of hiring OpenAI personnel. At that time, Musk was still serving as a board member of OpenAI.

Musk sent a message to a Tesla vice president regarding an early OpenAI researcher, Andrej Karpathy, stating, “Just talked to Andrej and he accepted as joining as director of Tesla Vision.” Musk noted, “Andrej is arguably the #2 guy in the world in computer vision…The OpenAI folks are gonna want to kill me, but it had to be done.”

While on the stand, Musk contended that Karpathy had already been considering leaving OpenAI prior to Musk’s efforts to recruit him for Tesla. “Andrej had made his decision. If he’s going to leave OpenAI, he might as well work at Tesla,” Musk explained.

In that same month, Musk reached out to Ben Rapoport, a Neuralink cofounder, stating, “Hire independently or directly from OpenAI. I have no problem if you pitch people at OpenAI to work at Neuralink.”

When Savitt pressed him on this matter, Musk contended that it would have been unlawful to prohibit Tesla and Neuralink from hiring individuals affiliated with OpenAI. “It’s illegal to restrict employment. It would be illegal to say you can’t employ people from OpenAI. You can’t have some cabal that stops people from working at the company they want to work at,” Musk stated.