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On October 23rd, 2022, Elon Musk texted Sam Altman a link to a story from The Information about OpenAI seeking more funding from Microsoft. This was five weeks before ChatGPT arrived, and about five months before Musk launched xAI. “I was disturbed to see OpenAI with a $20 billion valuation,” Musk wrote then. “De facto, I provided almost all the seed A and most of B round funding.”
“This is a bait-and-switch,” he added.
That’s the core allegation underlying the spectacle that’s been playing out in federal court, and across our Twitter timelines, for the past two weeks. Musk alleges both he and the entire world were duped by OpenAI’s founding mission as a nonprofit, betrayed by the company’s decision to create a for-profit entity, and that OpenAI and its founders have been unjustly enriched thanks to their initial deception and subsequent maneuvers to make OpenAI one of the most valuable for-profit ventures on earth (though actual profits may still be theoretical).
Altman responded to Musk in 2022 by writing the following:
