Court documents reveal Musk sought to recruit Altman to Tesla AI lab and merge OpenAI into Tesla before leaving the board in February 2018

During the Musk v. Altman trial, emails and testimony showed that before Musk left OpenAI's board in February 2018, he attempted to recruit Altman to lead a "world-class AI lab" within Tesla and offered Altman a Tesla board seat. Zilis, then an OpenAI adviser and Tesla executive, texted Altman asking if he had "think[n] through a B Corp subsidiary of Tesla," and a Tesla FAQ draft marked Altman's name with question marks next to Musk's, noting the NeurIPS event "could be a forcing function for Sam to commit to TeslaAI."

Musk's lawsuit claims that Altman and OpenAI president Brockman "effectively stole" a nonprofit using the $38 million Musk invested to create a private company now worth more than $800 billion. OpenAI's legal team countered that Musk has had "sour grapes" since failing to assume control in 2017 and has since started a rival, for-profit AI lab (xAI).

Zilis testified that Altman never joined Tesla and the AI lab and planned NeurIPS event never materialized. She also testified that Musk reached out to recruit Karpathy, a former OpenAI researcher, to Tesla—testimony OpenAI's lawyer said contradicts Musk's earlier claim that Karpathy left of his own volition.