Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Wenser (@wenser 2010 )

On April 28, Musk faced off against OpenAI executives in a federal court in Oakland, California. (See details in "Musk vs. Altman, the Largest AI Case in History Has Opened")

This man, who bears the title of the world's richest person, was directly involved in the creation of OpenAI, only to abruptly exit like Jobs did in his time. With the release of insider information regarding the court sessions and evidence presented on May 6 and 7, more unknown details about this case involving the two trillion-dollar tech giants, SpaceX and OpenAI, have gradually come to light. Among these are Musk's various maneuvers, as well as the selfish principles of OpenAI executives.

Odaily Planet Daily has compiled eight stories based on public information and court documents to help readers gain insight into the background of this historic AI trial with a settlement amount as high as 134 billion dollars.

Insider Story 1: Musk Splashing 38 Million Dollars in Startup Funds, OpenAI Executive Greg Brockman "Lazy Earns" 30 Billion Dollars in Equity

In the second week of the Musk vs. OpenAI case, OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman appeared in a California court along with his personal diary from 2015 to 2023 as evidence. He was immediately caught out by Musk's lawyer Steven Molo for a "little loophole" — compared to Musk's actual cash support of 38 million dollars for the founding and early development of OpenAI, Greg Brockman openly stated that he "did not invest a cent during the establishment and development of OpenAI," yet today, given OpenAI's latest financing round valuing the company at 825 billion dollars, his personal stake in OpenAI is now worth about 30 billion dollars.

Greg Brockman's diary also reveals his "wealth ambition" — it mentions:

• “Financially, what will take me to $1B?”; “It would be nice to be making the billions.” / “We’ve been thinking that maybe we should just flip to a for profit. Making the money for us sounds great and all.”
• “Can’t see us turning this into a for-profit without a very nasty fight... It’d be wrong to steal the non-profit from him. That’d be pretty morally bankrupt... and he’s really not an idiot. His story will correctly be that we weren’t honest with him in the end about still wanting to do the for-profit just without him.”
• Moreover, he even wrote: “This is our only chance to get rid of Musk... Let me make a billion dollars.”

Although Greg Brockman argued that some situations were hypothetical scenarios after the board ousted Musk, it still does not sound as if he is indifferent to fame and fortune.

The reason for emphasizing this is that Greg Brockman had previously pledged to donate 100,000 dollars to the OpenAI non-profit foundation, but that promise has never been fulfilled; when asked, "Do you want to fund a non-profit organization, or do you want to become a billionaire relying on OpenAI?" he generously responded that "having a billion dollars in stock is already very satisfying," but when Musk's lawyer Molo asked why he didn’t donate the remaining 29 billion dollars of equity to the OpenAI non-profit foundation, Greg was rendered speechless.

In contrast, Greg had previously invested 471 million dollars in his former company Stripe and holds shares in the cloud computing provider Corweave, which is one of OpenAI's partners. The co-founder who contributed via technology now suddenly became a focal point of public opinion.

Insider Story 2: Former OpenAI Board Member Met Musk Through Team Building, Later Donated Sperm and Had Four Children

On May 7, Beijing time, former OpenAI Board Member Shivon Zilis, who has four children with Musk, also appeared in court as a witness.

According to her, she first met Musk during a company team building at OpenAI when she joined OpenAI in 2016, later serving for several years as a board member.

After deciding to become a single mother and have children, Musk, who has always taken "human-centricism" as his mission, voluntarily proposed to donate sperm as a donor to help her produce test-tube babies.

As for the current emotional state between the two, Shivon Zilis stated, “We are now in a romantic relationship, and Musk visits regularly.” However, she denied being Musk’s “secret agent” or “information channel”; Musk dubbed her a "close advisor."

After Musk's fallout with other OpenAI co-founders in 2018, she continued to play the role of a communication bridge; it wasn’t until Musk established OpenAI competitor xAI in 2023 that she officially left the OpenAI board.

Insider Story 3: OpenAI Originally Named "AI Manhattan Project," Later Musk Personally Set the Current Name

In May 2015, Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, who was still president at YC, sent Musk an email proposing to lead a "Manhattan Project-style AI laboratory." (Odaily Planet Daily note: referencing the atomic bomb project led by Oppenheimer.)

Ultimately, Musk personally named the new AI laboratory the "Open AI Institute," abbreviated to "OpenAI" (drawing on the Open Source concept) — this name itself carries the core philosophy behind OpenAI’s birth — openness, transparency, and serving all humanity.

Looking back, the development of the AGI route and the current awkward situation between the two could suggest that Sam Altman might have long seen OpenAI and AI large models transitioning from being tools "to end wars," to becoming "large-scale weapons of mass destruction." And OpenAI’s current complete transformation into a commercially profitable company planning an IPO also means a departure from its once-open source spirit.

Insider Story 4: Musk "Poached" Former Google Researcher Ilya Sutskever to Join OpenAI with a Phone Call

In 2015, Ilya Sutskever, who had been acquired for talent by Google, suddenly received a "cold email" from Sam Altman (Odaily Planet Daily note: that is, sending a personal email directly to someone completely unknown with no prior interaction), inviting him to dinner with Greg Brockman and Musk to discuss forming a new AI research organization (which later became OpenAI). At that time, Sam Altman emphasized that the goal of founding the organization was to develop AGI that benefits all humanity and avoid monopolization by a small number of large corporations.

At that time, he had already been working at Google for nearly three years and was highly valued and actively courted by people from the Google Brain team and DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis.

Faced with the "chief scientist" olive branch from OpenAI, a newcomer that hadn't achieved much, Ilya Sutskever, although sharing similar ideals, hesitated due to various concerns. Ultimately, Musk called him on the day OpenAI officially announced its launch, persuading him to switch jobs and bringing in a foundational figure for OpenAI's early development.

Unfortunately, in November 2023, Ilya Sutskever, a board member, participated in the effort to "remove Sam Altman as CEO" due to issues with AI safety and commercialization developments, which ultimately ended with Sam Altman taking charge of the board, Ilya publicly apologizing, and resigning from the board. By May 2024, he officially left OpenAI, and Sam Altman publicly thanked him, stating, "Without Ilya, there would be no OpenAI today."

Insider Story 5: OpenAI Almost Became a Tesla Subsidiary, OpenAI Employees Once Worked for Tesla for Free

These two pieces of information come from former OpenAI Board Member Shivon Zilis as well as OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman.

According to Shivon Zilis, in 2017, about two years after OpenAI's founding, Musk, Sam Altman, and others were at their wits’ end over computing resources, funding, and were consistently looking for funding and GPU resources.

One day, Musk suddenly proposed that OpenAI merge with Tesla to become its subsidiary, turning it into an internal AI laboratory to seek more funding and resource support. Additionally, Musk also prepared a Tesla board seat for Sam Altman. Of course, under the strong insistence of Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, this plan ultimately did not materialize. It was also after this that Musk gradually parted ways with the current founding team of OpenAI, completely breaking relations in 2018 and angrily exiting.

Moreover, according to Greg Brockman, Musk had also reassigned several OpenAI employees to Tesla's autonomous driving team to "work for free," including former OpenAI researcher Andrej Karpathy, who later officially joined Tesla and is now one of the big names in the AI circle.

Insider Story 6: Musk Once "Bribed" Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever with the Tesla Model 3 Founder Edition

In July 2017, just before the "haunted mansion meeting" over the control dispute of OpenAI's majority equity, Musk explicitly stated in an email to some OpenAI executives: "As a thank you for your contributions to OpenAI, I want to give each of you a Founder Series Model 3. These are the first batch produced, not yet open to the public."

In August 2017, a text Sutskever sent to Brockman also mentioned this matter: “At least we’re getting our Teslas.” “Will a Model 3 make you be willing to accept massively unfavorable terms?” At that time, the core executives of OpenAI were already prepared for Musk's "sugar-coated bullets."

Greg Brockman also stated in court that Musk's "Tesla car rewards" were not given due to diligent work, but to give him more say in OpenAI, as a way to "appease" him and Ilya Sutskever (Odaily Planet Daily note: which can even be considered a form of indirect bribery). Because this batch of cars was delivered in late August 2017, just before the meeting regarding the equity distribution of OpenAI's profit-making entity.

Additionally, interestingly, as a goodwill return, the then Chief Scientist of OpenAI, Ilya Sutskever, specifically commissioned a painting of the Tesla Model 3 and later gifted it to Musk at the "haunted mansion meeting."

Insider Story 7: At the Haunted Mansion Meeting, Musk Suddenly Went Berserk, Almost "Assaulted" Someone

In August 2017, after OpenAI defeated top human players in a Dota 2 competition, Musk suggested a "celebration" and invited the OpenAI team to party at his recently purchased 47-acre, 23 million dollar mansion in Hillsborough, California.

Due to the old decor, poor maintenance, and bizarre ambiance (like a Gatsby-style bizarre mansion), Musk humorously called this mansion the "haunted mansion," even sending an email in advance warning everyone about potential "party carnage."

According to Greg Brockman's recollection in court, besides the OpenAI team, Musk's then-girlfriend Amber Heard was also present; after pouring whiskey for everyone, she left with her friends. Initially, the atmosphere was very harmonious, but when everyone began discussing the "next steps" regarding "OpenAI transitioning to a profit-making organization," a sudden change occurred — after failing to receive the anticipated response on equity distribution and control, Musk suddenly stood up, became furious, and raged around the table. Brockman directly stated: "I genuinely thought he was going to hit me."

In the end, Musk grabbed the painting Ilya Sutskever gifted and announced he would cut funding support to OpenAI unless Brockman and Sutskever resigned, then stormed out of the room, leaving the party in disarray.

Insider Story 8: Musk "Endured Humiliation" to Compete for Control of OpenAI, Just to Achieve His "Mars Dream"?

At the court hearing, when asked, "Why does Musk have to have control of OpenAI?" Greg Brockman stated that Musk had told him part of the reason was that he needed 80 billion dollars to complete his grand vision of building a city on Mars.

On the other hand, SpaceX's IPO is also underway, aiming to raise about 75 billion dollars, which is quite close to the 80 billion dollars mentioned by Brockman.

Eight years later, the fundamental crux of Musk's love-hate relationship with OpenAI may finally come to light — Musk needs OpenAI to become a key container for funding SpaceX. Had he successfully taken control of OpenAI from the beginning, he might have also transformed OpenAI into a profit-making organization like Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. The difference would be that Musk perhaps wouldn’t have had to start xAI from scratch and ultimately merge it into SpaceX.

Of course, based on the latest news, Musk has turned to seek cooperation with OpenAI's biggest competitor, Anthropic, betting his available computing resources on the latter to rescue himself and realize his ultimate dream — landing on Mars. See more in"Musk and Anthropic, Going to Space for Power".

In conclusion, we end with a courtroom anecdote from this case involving a potential 134 billion dollar compensation, the "first case in the AI field."

According to documents submitted by OpenAI's lawyers, two days before the official hearing, Musk sent a text to Greg Brockman inquiring about OpenAI's willingness to settle, and when the latter mentioned "both sides should give up their respective claims," Musk retorted: "This weekend, you and Sam will become the most hated people in America. If you insist, then so be it."

Although the judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who was overseeing the case, ultimately did not accept the text as evidence, given the current situation, the "lawsuit battle" between Musk and OpenAI is far from reaching a showdown.

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