Why is Musk suing OpenAI?

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New York (CNN) --

OpenAI hit back at Elon Musk, after the billionaire sued the ChatGPT company last week for seeking profits and deviating from its original nonprofit mission.

Late Tuesday, OpenAI published several emails from Musk dating back to the company's early days in which he appears to recognize that the company needed to make a lot of money to fund the incredible computing resources needed to fuel its AI ambitions ( AI).

In the emails, parts of which have been redacted, Musk argues that the company had virtually no chance of building a successful generative AI platform by raising cash alone, and that the company needed to find alternative sources of revenue to survive.

  • Elon Musk sues OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, for breach of contract

In a Nov. 22, 2015, email to CEO Sam Altman, Musk, OpenAI's co-founder, said the company needed to raise much more than $100 million to "avoid sounding incompetent."

Musk suggested a $1 billion funding commitment and promised to cover what could not be raised.

OpenAI, in a blog post Tuesday night, said Musk never kept his promise, pledging $45 million in funding to OpenAI while other donors raised $90 million.

Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

Musk, in a February 1, 2018 email, told company executives that the only way forward for OpenAI was for Tesla, his electric car company, to buy it.

The company refused, and Musk left OpenAI later that year.

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In December 2018, Musk sent an email to Altman and other executives saying that OpenAI would not be relevant "without a drastic change in execution and resources."

"This needs billions a year immediately or forget it," Musk wrote via email.

"I really hope I'm wrong."

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OpenAI executives agreed.

In 2019, they formed OpenAI LP, a for-profit entity that exists within the larger company structure.

That for-profit company took OpenAI from virtually worthless to $90 billion in just a few years, and Altman is largely credited as the mastermind of that plan and the key to its success. the company.

Since then, Microsoft has invested $13 billion in close collaboration with OpenAI.

Musk's lawsuit, filed last week in California state court, claims that the company and its partnership with Microsoft violated OpenAI's founding charter, amounting to a breach of contract.

Musk is asking for a jury trial and for the company, Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman to return the profits they received from the business.

OpenAI was founded as a check on what its founders considered a serious threat that artificial generative intelligence, or AGI, posed to humanity.

The company created a board of overseers to review any products the company created, and the code for its products was made public.

The company says on its blog that it has not strayed from its mission and will dismiss all of Musk's claims.

He said his technology is widely available and improves people's lives, while the company remains committed to the safety of its products.

"We are saddened to have come to this with someone we have deeply admired, someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we would fail, founded a competitor, and then sued us when we started making significant progress toward OpenAI's mission without him. "the company said in its blog post.

Elon MuskOpenAI