Elon Musk has a lawsuit against OpenAI and it's certainly related to the company becoming profitable. The man is literally suing a nonprofit organization he helped create. And what's his claim? He said the company violated its founding mission.
But what at all was Elon musk expecting to happen when OpenAI pivoted toward profitability?
Maybe he saw the company as some sort of eternal guardian of humanity’s future. I don't think any company should stay nonprofit for life, I will wonder how sustainable that'll be.
OpenAI is now a big tech company, no longer a startup and it's currently valued at $157 billion, but while that's happening Elon Musk has been left on the sidelines watching the company grow without him. It’s really not that hard to see why the man would be upset, let's face it, he started this AI project to benefit humanity, not shareholders.
But what makes me suspicious about the lawsuit is the timing in which he did it. Musk only started talking against the company after ChatGPT skyrocketed in popularity and value.
Did his frustration really come from OpenAI’s shift to a for-profit model or was it about the pain of being excluded from the glory?
Musk did try to take control of the organization way back in 2017 and when that ended up a failed mission, he separated himself. No wonder Musk’s lawsuit is more personal than principled based. He has established his own AI competitor called xAI, and for some reason that company has a vested interest in OpenAI’s research. This ain't coincidence, Musk is aiming at tough competition and dethroning OpenAI as the best in AI services.
But the law isn’t in Musk’s favor at all. Once you donate, that money’s just gone. The nonprofit world doesn’t work like a bank so you can’t demand a refund because you’re unhappy with the direction things are going.
He already knows this so maybe it’s not about winning the lawsuit. Maybe it’s about making a point to the company that they're changing from what they were meant to be.