Elon Musk tried to hire OpenAI founders to start AI unit inside Tesla
Musk was “prepared to do the for-profit, provided he would get control.”
Elon Musk tried to hire OpenAI’s founding team, including Sam Altman, to lead a new AI lab within Tesla in 2018, as the AI start-up’s leaders grappled over who should control the company and its direction.
Musk, a co-founder of the AI group, proposed bringing Altman, Greg Brockman, and Ilya Sutskever to his carmaker, appointing Altman to the board or making OpenAI a Tesla subsidiary, according to evidence in a high-stakes trial between the billionaire and the ChatGPT maker on Wednesday.
The disclosures shed light on a crucial issue in the case, in which Musk has claimed that Altman “stole a charity” by converting the company into a for-profit. OpenAI’s lawyers have argued the Tesla chief executive was happy to commercialize the lab, provided that he remained in charge.
This story was first published by Ars Technica. Read the original report