Musk Proposed Greater Control and For-Profit Structure for OpenAI in 2017, Brockman Testifies

Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president and co-founder, testified in federal court in Oakland, California, that in 2017 Elon Musk proposed taking greater control of the organization and converting it from nonprofit to for-profit status. The testimony came during the second week of a trial in which Musk is suing OpenAI, Sam Altman and Brockman.

Musk alleges the defendants violated the founding agreement and unjustly enriched themselves after he left the organization in 2018.

OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit. Court records and Brockman’s own contemporaneous notes show that by 2017 discussions were underway about shifting to a for-profit model to raise the capital the lab’s leaders believed was required to compete.

” Another entry states, “It’d be wrong to steal the non-profit from him. to convert to a b-corp without him.

Brockman told the jury the diary entries were private stream-of-consciousness writing never intended for public view. “It’s very painful. It’s very deeply personal writings that weren’t meant for the world to see but there’s nothing in there that I’m ashamed of,” he testified.

According to Brockman’s testimony, Musk met with him in 2017 and proposed taking greater equity and control, arguing he had founded multiple multibillion-dollar companies and supplied the majority of OpenAI’s early funding. Brockman said he rejected the proposal.

He testified that after the meeting Musk announced he would stop providing further funding. Brockman also stated that Musk was aware of the plans to shift OpenAI to a for-profit structure.

The same 2017 period included OpenAI’s AI system winning a video game competition in Seattle against top human players. Musk hosted a celebration at a recently purchased San Francisco mansion attended by Brockman, Altman and others. At that gathering the group discussed making OpenAI a for-profit company.