Elon Musk has a new figure for the amount of money he says he contributed to OpenAI, believing it would remain a nonprofit.
In recent court filings, Musk’s lawyers said the Tesla CEO forked over $38 million to the ChatGPT maker over the years, making him one of the company’s most significant early funders.
Contributions included quarterly grants of $5 million each, $12.7 million in OpenAI’s rent between 2016 and 2020, and four straight-out-of-the-factory Teslas to “key employees” to show “appreciation,” the November 7 filing said.
The disclosure marks the latest in an ongoing feud between Musk and OpenAI cofounder Sam Altman over the ChatGPT maker’s for-profit transition, which the company completed last month. Musk sued Altman and the company last year, saying that his financial contributions were made on the condition that OpenAI remain a nonprofit serving humanity.
Lawyers for OpenAI have asked for the case to be dismissed, arguing that he made most of his contributions indirectly, including through donor-advised funds. Musk filed the latest documents in a bid to convince the judge to allow the case to go to trial, saying he made most of his contributions directly, including “five quarterly grants of $5 million each in 2016 and 2017.”
Attached to the filing was a 2017 email from Musk to OpenAI co-founders Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever offering them fresh-off-the-production-line Teslas.
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“In appreciation for what you’ve done to get OpenAI to where it is today, I would like to give you each a Founder Series Model 3,” the email read. “These are the earliest cars produced and are not available to the public.”
Emailing from his SpaceX account, Musk asked whether he should extend the free car offer to others, mentioning OpenAI cofounder Wojciech Zaremba. Sutskever replied, “Wow, thank you!” before suggesting cofounder John Schulman should also get a car.
Musk has previously tweeted that he contributed $100 million to OpenAI. The artificial intelligence company has put the figure at under $45 million.
An OpenAI spokesperson declined to comment on the specifics of the Telsas to founders or other contributions, saying only that Musk’s lawsuit is “baseless and time-wasting.” The AI company has also previously published emails it said showed Musk pushed for OpenAI to merge with Tesla.
Musk has argued that the case should proceed to trial because there are factual disputes about whether OpenAI and its leaders misled him and misused his charitable contributions.
