OpenAI pushed back at Elon Musk's efforts to block its plan to become a for-profit business by releasing a slew of emails and messages indicating the billionaire originally supported a more traditional corporate structure for the artificial intelligence startup.
The internal communication, published in a blog post on Friday, came in response to Musk's recent request that a federal court block the startup from pursuing what he called an "illegal" conversion to a for-profit company. Musk's filing continued a months-long attack on OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman, nine years after the two men worked together to launch OpenAI as a nonprofit with a stated mission to develop generative AI for the benefit of society.
In the filing, Musk, who left OpenAI in 2018 and is also the founder of rival startup xAI, repeated his earlier claims that OpenAI broke its promises to him and abandoned its founding purpose as a charity when it accepted billions of dollars in backing from Microsoft Corp. starting in 2019. He also said that without quick court intervention, it will soon be too late to stop Altman's "behemoth" from crushing its rivals.
However, the emails released by OpenAI suggest Musk thought the startup should include a for-profit component in its earliest days. In a message sent to Altman shortly before OpenAI's launch in late 2015, Musk wrote that, rather than following a plan to have a Delaware-based nonprofit structure, it was "probably better" to form "a standard C-corp with a parallel nonprofit."
OpenAI said Musk went as far as creating a Delaware-based for-profit entity -- a public benefit corporation that was proposed as a new structure for the company, the same setup the company is now weighing.
The startup included a screenshot of a Delaware state business search web page showing the registration of a public benefit corporation called Open Artificial Intelligence Technologies Inc. in September 2017. OpenAI said Musk had his money manager, Jared Birchall, create the entity. OpenAI also posted a copy of a Delaware annual franchise tax report for 2018 that lists Birchall as a director of the company.
"When he didn't get majority equity and full control, he walked away and told us we would fail," OpenAI said. "Now that OpenAI is the leading AI research lab and Elon runs a competing AI company, he's asking the court to stop us from effectively pursuing our mission."