How Elon Musk left OpenAI, according to Greg Brockman

In late August 2017, key figures at OpenAI (then a small non-profit research lab) met to discuss how to create a for-profit organization to commercialize its technology and raise the funds needed to achieve artificial general intelligence.

Elon Musk was demanding full control of the company and had just given each of his co-founders a Tesla Model 3. CTO Greg Brockman said he saw it as a way to support them at a time when Musk and Sam Altman were vying to gain support for their vision for the company’s future. Ilya Sutskever, head of research at OpenAI, had commissioned a painting of a Tesla to give to Musk during the meeting as a friendly gesture.

The conversation didn’t follow that mood: When Musk was told that others wouldn’t agree to his request to take control of the company, Brockman said he felt angry and upset. He sat for several minutes, quietly thinking.

And then, in Brockman’s account, Musk said, “I refuse.” The SpaceX and Tesla founder “stood up and lunged around the table… I thought he was going to hit me. He grabbed the plate and started to walk out of the room. Then he turned around and said, ‘When are you leaving OpenAI?'”

Brockman and Sutskever did not abandon or commit to Musk’s vision. Musk has halted his regular donations to the company’s operating budget, and within six months, he will leave the board of directors, although he has paid for the office space the company shares with Neuralink through 2020.

As the legal battle continues today over the future of OpenAI, scrutiny has settled on a key period in 2017 when the organization’s original founders disagreed over who would control its future, ultimately leading to Musk filing a lawsuit against his co-founders.

We haven’t heard from Sam Altman yet, but OpenAI chief Greg Brockman testified for two days, often referring to a personal journal that offers a rare look at what it’s like to be a 30-year-old tech executive in a pitched battle with Elon Musk.

“It’s very hurtful,” Brockman said of the publicity surrounding the magazine, describing it as “deeply personal writing that the world was never meant to see.” [But] There is nothing to be ashamed of.”

Crucial negotiations between startup founders are rarely shared publicly, especially when a company becomes as world-changing as OpenAI.

We recently saw a taste of this rancor when OpenAI lawyers shared a text message Musk sent to Brockman two days before the trial began: “By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. And if you insist, he will be.”

The jury won’t see this memo, but Musk’s lawyers did their best to live up to its spirit. They’re trying to show the court that Altman and Brockman “robbed a charity,” while OpenAI’s legal team is trying to show that Musk had the exact same plan in mind.

The inciting incident of all this was when the OpenAI model defeated the best human player in the video game DOTA II. Brockman said that convinced everyone in the organization that computing was the key resource for creating powerful AI tools, but fundraising as a purely nonprofit would not be enough.

That led to talks about a for-profit subsidiary, which Musk wanted “unambiguous control” of, at least initially. The other founders suggested equal shares, and perhaps more shares in proportion to the cash investment. Another idea on the table is to somehow tie OpenAI to Tesla’s AI work. There are more than 20 variations on the plan, said Shivon Zellis, an OpenAI consultant who served as an intermediary between Musk and the team there.

But when the other founders refused to give Musk control, their partnership fell apart.

“There should not be one person who has complete and utter control over OpenAI,” Brockman testified. Brockman and Sutskever discussed a plan to oust Elon from OpenAI’s board moving forward, leading to November 2017 journal entries that Musk’s lawyers focused on.

‘[C]“We don’t see turning this into a for-profit venture without a really bad fight,” Brockman wrote.[I’m] Just think about the office and we are in the office. And it would be true to his story that we weren’t honest with him in the end about still wanting to make a profit without him… BTW another realization from this is that it would be wrong to steal non-profit money from him. To convert to a B-corp without it. That would be morally bankrupt. He’s really not a fool.”

“Stealing nonprofits” may sound condemnatory, but the context, according to Brockman, was about whether or not to try to get Musk off the board. In the end they didn’t. Musk voluntarily left the board in February 2018, concluding that “OpenAI is on a path to certain failure,” saying he plans to focus more on AI at Tesla.

Brockman described his thoughts as an attempt to determine whether he would be satisfied with his working life.

“This is the only chance we have to get rid of Elon,” he wrote during the talks. “Is he the ‘Glorious Leader’ I would choose? We really have a shot at making it happen. Financially, what would get me to a billion dollars?”

Musk’s lawyers also seized on this last thought as a sign that Brockman was thinking more about his personal wealth than the nonprofit’s mission. Brockman said his current stake in the company is worth about $30 billion, which became an opportunity for Steve Mollo, Musk’s lead trial lawyer, to rebuke him.

“Why didn’t you take $29 billion more than the billion you said you would benefit from, and donate it to charity?” – Mulu student.

“Look at what we’ve accomplished,” Brockman replied. “The non-profit organization OpenAI has over $150 billion in OpenAI stock value. This is something we built through hard work, blood, sweat and tears, all this time since Elon’s passing.”

Mollo also talked about emails in which Brockman said he would donate $100,000 to OpenAI, something he never did. Ironically, Brockman may be best known to the public for making the largest donation of the 2025 political cycle, $25 million given to MAGA Inc., a SuperPAC that supports President Donald Trump, but this was not mentioned at trial.

Mollo scoffed at Brockman’s description of the fraught meeting over his control of the company, saying Musk was “mean” to Brockman and suggesting that Brockman did not understand governance issues the way Musk, a serial founder, did.

However, Brockman said Musk did not understand artificial intelligence. “He did not know and did not know AI,” he testified, describing Musk rejecting an early demo of the software that would become ChatGPT. “We didn’t think he would take the time to really master it.”

“The fact that Elon saw this very early version of the research, which really set all this stuff in motion, [and] “I didn’t recognize that spark — that was exactly the thing that needed to be avoided in this environment,” Brockman said.

In 2019, OpenAI will create a for-profit foundation and use it to raise $1 billion from Microsoft. The company is set to raise an additional $13 billion from the software giant over the next four years, adding to its rise as the leading laboratory for artificial intelligence. It also boosted the net worth of the company’s executives and employees, as well as assets owned by the nonprofit OpenAI.

Ultimately, those deals fueled Musk’s suspicions that Altman and Brockman were involved, leading him to file his lawsuit in 2024. The trial is expected to continue until next week.