No founding agreement with Elon Musk, claims OpenAI

LONDON: Sam Altman-run OpenAI has clarified that they are not in any kind of founding agreement with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, refuting his claim that the ChatGPT maker violated a contract with the billionaire.

In a court filing, the company said that the evidence would show that “Musk supported a for-profit structure for OpenAI, to be controlled by Musk himself, and dropped the project when his wishes were not followed”.

“Seeing the remarkable technological advances OpenAI has achieved, Musk now wants that success for himself,” the lawsuit read.

The company argued that there is no “Founding Agreement, or any agreement at all with Musk, as the complaint itself makes clear”.

“The Founding Agreement is instead a fiction Musk has conjured to lay unearned claim to the fruits of an enterprise he initially supported, then abandoned, then watched succeed without him,” read the lawsuit.

OpenAI last week hit back at Musk’s lawsuit, saying as the company discussed a for-profit structure in order to further the mission, “Musk wanted us to merge with Tesla or he wanted full control”.

In a blog post, the ChatGPT maker alleged that Musk wanted “majority equity, initial board control, and to be CEO.”

In the middle of these discussions, “he withheld funding”.

Musk alleged in his lawsuit that OpenAI has become “a closed-source de facto subsidiary” of Microsoft.