Elon Musk wanted OpenAI to merge with Tesla, say founders

We intend to move to dismiss all of Elon’s claims.

In late 2017, we and Elon decided the next step for the mission was to create a for-profit entity.

We couldn’t agree to terms on a for-profit with Elon because we felt it was against the mission for any individual to have absolute control over OpenAI.

He then suggested instead merging OpenAI into Tesla.

Elon soon chose to leave OpenAI, saying that our probability of success was 0, and that he planned to build an AGI competitor within Tesla.

Elon understood the mission did not imply open-sourcing AGI.

The founders of OpenAI have strongly rebutted claims made by Elon Musk and countered that he wanted the artificial general intelligence (AGI) startup to be part of Tesla.

This response came in the form of a blog post, given that Musk has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI accusing them of steering away from the path of being a non-profit entity. The post also displayed the e-mail exchanges.

The blog post says there was a discussion between Musk and the OpenAI founders on making the startup a for profit enterprise, but could not decide on the terms as the Tesla CEO wanted majority control, which the founders were not comfortable about.

OpenAI was founded in 2015, with Elon Musk being one of the key members with others like Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. Musk left the company in early 2018.

“We couldn’t agree to terms on a for-profit with Elon because we felt it was against the mission for any individual to have absolute control over OpenAI. He then suggested instead merging OpenAI into Tesla,” the blog said.