Elon Musk reveals how he will spend the OpenAI settlement if he wins the lawsuit. For those unversed, Musk co-founded the startup in 2015 along with Sam Altman and other partners. He alleged that Altman abandoned its initial non-profit structure in pursuit of higher revenue and profits. The Tesla founder argued that this goes against its founding mission. He eventually left the company in 2018. Interestingly, Musk’s Grok serves as a direct competitor to OpenAI and ChatGPT.
Elon Musk shares what he’ll do with the settlement if he wins OpenAI lawsuit
Elon Musk announces what he will do with the settlement money if he wins the OpenAI lawsuit. On March 17, he tweeted, “Btw, the proceeds of any legal victory in the OpenAI case will be donated to charity. I will in no way enrich myself.” Unsurprisingly, the post garnered 208K likes, 4.7K bookmarks, 16K retweets, and 14K comments, as of the time of writing.
A user asked Musk’s AI tool Grok to explain the case in brief. Grok elucidated, “The OpenAI case is Elon Musk’s 2024 lawsuit vs. OpenAI, Sam Altman & Microsoft.” The AI tool explained that the 54-year-old co-founded OpenAI as a “non-profit” for safe AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), “benefiting humanity (not profit).”
He invested $38 million along with strategic guidance and extensive input before quitting OpenAI in 2018. According to Grok, Musk claims they “defrauded” him by converting it into a capped-profit structure by partnering with Microsoft. By taking these steps, Altman and the other partners ditched their founding mission to chase profits and revenue.
However, according to Grok, OpenAI countered by stating Musk “knew/agreed” to for-profit plans by 2017. In fact, “talks broke over control.” OpenAI alleged that Musk wanted complete ownership, which was dismissed by the other founders. He eventually quit and asked them to “raise billions independently.”
According to Grok, the Tesla founder is seeking damages that could range from roughly $79 billion to $134 billion, calling them “wrongful gains.” However, the court has raised pertinent questions and called the numerical figures “speculative.”
A jury trial is scheduled to begin on April 28 in a California federal court. Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman denied the Tesla founder’s claims. They also described him as a “frustrated commercial competitor seeking to slow down a mission-driven market leader.” (via The Guardian).
Originally reported by Anwaya Mane on Reality Tea.
