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OpenAI responds to Elon Musk lawsuit: ‘Wanted us to merge with Tesla or…'
OpenAI said Elon Musk signed off on the company’s decision to become a for-profit entity as he needed to raise “billions” to be relevant in comparison to Google
OpenAI responded to a lawsuit filed against the company by Elon Musk in a blog post. In the blog post, OpenAI said that Elon Musk signed off on the company’s decision to become a for-profit entity as he needed to raise “billions” of dollars to be relevant in comparison to Google. This comes as Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman which alleged that the startup was moving away from its mission to make responsible AI.
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OpenAI said that Elon Musk was lashing out after trying and failing to make the company part of Tesla Inc.
“We’re sad that it’s come to this with someone whom we’ve deeply admired — someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we would fail, started a competitor, and then sued us when we started making meaningful progress towards OpenAI’s mission without him,” the company said in the post.
Reproducing emails that Elon Musk sent to people at the company which showed that the the billionaire had endorsed OpenAI’s fundraising efforts, OpenAI said that Elon Musk hadn’t always been opposed to corporate influence at the company. In one email, Elon Musk wrote, “This needs billions per year immediately or forget it."
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In the beginning, the company planned to raise $100 million, it said. “We need to go with a much bigger number than $100M to avoid sounding hopeless relative to what Google or Facebook are spending,” Elon Musk wrote in an email cited by the startup, adding “I think we should say that we are starting with a $1B funding commitment... I will cover whatever anyone else doesn’t provide.”
OpenAI also said that Elon Musk had written in an e-mail, “Tesla is the only path that could even hope to hold a candle to Google. Even then, the probability of being a counterweight to Google is small. It just isn’t zero.”
