Greg Brockman testifies that Elon Musk demanded full control of OpenAI in 2017, left the board after co-founders refused

In late August 2017, Musk demanded 'unequivocal' control of a proposed for-profit subsidiary to commercialize OpenAI's technology. When co-founders Brockman and Ilya Sutskever proposed equal shares instead, Musk became angry, grabbed a painting of a Tesla commissioned by Sutskever, and asked Brockman 'When will you be departing OpenAI?' Musk stopped regular donations to the company's operating budget and left the board in February 2018.

Brockman testified that the catalyst for the for-profit proposal was when an OpenAI model defeated the top human player in the video game DOTA II, convincing the organization that compute was the key resource to create powerful AI tools. Brockman said Musk 'did not and does not know AI' and dismissed an early demonstration of the software that would become ChatGPT.

In 2019, OpenAI created a for-profit and raised $1 billion from Microsoft, with the software giant providing a further $13 billion over the next four years. Brockman testified that the OpenAI non-profit holds over $150 billion of OpenAI equity value. Musk filed suit in 2024, alleging that Altman and Brockman 'stole a charity.'