How Elon Musk left OpenAI, according to Greg Brockman
Cutthroat negotiations between startup founders are rarely shared so publicly, especially when a company becomes as world-changing as OpenAI.
AI Summary
In August 2017, OpenAI's co-founders gathered to discuss converting the nonprofit into a for-profit entity, but tensions erupted when Elon Musk demanded full control of the company. According to CTO Greg Brockman's testimony, when the other founders refused Musk's demand, he became angry, stormed around the table, grabbed a painting of a Tesla that Ilya Sutskever had commissioned as a gift, and asked when Brockman would be leaving OpenAI. After this confrontation, Musk stopped donating to the company's operating budget and left the board within six months, though he continued paying for shared office space until 2020. This 2017 dispute over control of OpenAI's future is now central to Musk's ongoing legal battle against his co-founders.