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Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google (cnbc.com) 62

Posted by BeauHD from the day-two dept.
Elon Musk testified on day two of his trial against OpenAI, saying he helped create the company as a nonprofit counterweight to Google and would not have backed it if the goal had been private profit. CNBC reports: Musk on Tuesday was the first witness called to testify in the trial. He spoke about his upbringing, his many companies, his role in founding OpenAI and his understanding of its structure. Musk said in his testimony that he was not opposed to the creation of a small for-profit subsidiary, "as long as the tail didn't wag the dog." Musk said he was motivated to start OpenAI to serve as a counterweight to Google. He got the idea after an argument he had with Google co-founder Larry Page, who called Musk a "speciesist for being pro-human," he testified. "I could have started it as a for profit and I chose not to," Musk said on the stand.

Earlier, attorneys for Musk and OpenAI presented their opening arguments to the jury. Musk's lead trial lawyer, Steven Molo, delivered the opening statement for the Tesla and SpaceX CEO. OpenAI lawyer William Savitt gave the opening statement for the AI company, Altman and Brockman. OpenAI has characterized Musk's lawsuit as a baseless "harassment campaign." The company said Monday in a post on X that it "can't wait to make our case in court where both the truth and the law are on our side."

During his testimony on Tuesday, Musk repeatedly emphasized that he founded OpenAI to serve as a counterweight to Google. He said he got the idea after an argument about AI safety with Google co-founder Larry Page, who Musk said called him "a speciesist for being pro-human." Musk said he was concerned Page was not taking AI safety seriously, so he wanted there to be an nonprofit, open source alternative to Google. "I could have started it as a for profit and I chose not to," Musk said on the stand. Further reading: Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Head To Court

Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google More | Reply

Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google

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  • So since you got kicked out of the non-profit - (Score:4, Funny)

    by T34L ( 10503334 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2026 @11:42PM (#66117708)

    And it turned into a for-profit against your wishes, the next AI company you started, xAI, is a non-profit, right?

    Right?

    Like, it's not gonna have an IPO as part of another for profit soon or anything, right?

    • Re:So since you got kicked out of the non-profit - (Score:4, Funny)

      by arglebargle_xiv ( 2212710 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2026 @11:53PM (#66117716)
      First we have hallucinating AIs, now we have humans hallucinating about AIs.

    • And it turned into a for-profit against your wishes, the next AI company you started, xAI, is a non-profit, right?

      So, if you tried to do it one way and it didn't work out that way, you'd do exactly the same thing again? Right?

      There is a serious interest for all of us. rug-pull-ware, where the developer starts off completely open, gets the community to test and validate their software everwhere and then close up once they begin to see commercial success is bad for everyone. It takes away from the community what it created. It slows down the creation of alternatives. It makes people less likely to contribute to other sof

      • Re:So since you got kicked out of the non-profit - (Score:4, Insightful)

        by T34L ( 10503334 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2026 @05:29AM (#66117968)

        Except, as is evident from the communication already published ahead of this, Musk was already positioning himself to do that exact rugpull himself. He's not upset that they pulled the rug, he's upset that he didn't get to be the one pulling.

      • So, if you tried to do it one way and it didn't work out that way, you'd do exactly the same thing again? Right?
        There is a serious interest for all of us. rug-pull-ware

        So what you're saying is Musk is here today to impose what clearly doesn't work on his competition because he has a serious conflict of interest with his own for-profit AI company that nobody uses for coding because the nutjob that owns it overrides his own engineers and inserts weird shit about white genocide into the system prompt when it doesn't speak his personal version of "truth"?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Junta ( 36770 )

        The point is the hypocrisy.

        He was content to throw money at a "cool AI project that is open" when it was a vague hypothetical, but when it's actually real business opportunity, he's all about being for-profit.

        Ok, not great, but fine, he changed his mind and thinks for-profit is the way to go. Except he insists his *competitor* should be penalized for not using the model he himself doesn't think viable. That's some self-serving hypocrisy there.

        That said, your point about rug-pulling broadly is on point. I

  • "nonprofit, open source alternative to Google"

    We get it. Why repeat? Oh right, lemmings have short memory and attention spans...

    • Yeah, the comma should not be there,"non-profit" and "opensource" aren't synonyms at all.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        A comma does not signify synonyms, it is merely a separator. And the OP was not referring to the comma, the entire phrase was repeated.

  • you heard about dupe stories (Score:5, Funny)

    by diffract ( 7165501 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2026 @12:55AM (#66117730)
    but I bet you never heard of dupe summary in the same story
    • Yo dawg... I heard you like stories.

    • but I bet you never heard of dupe summary in the same story

      What I have heard is that Musk founded OpenAI to serve as a counterweight to Google, and that he got the idea after an argument about AI safety with Google co-founder Larry Page, who Musk said called him "a speciesist for being pro-human."

      I also heard that Musk could have started it as a for profit and chose not to.

  • ...DeepMind is the best
    While OpenAI is trying to be Apple, DeepMind is trying to solve biology

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by T34L ( 10503334 )

      Truly looking towards them finally "solving" "biology". It's gonna be so great. Whole field of science, just, solved. Final. Done. No more observations, or experiments, or theories. Just a soltuion. Whatever that means.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ebyrob ( 165903 )

        > Just a soltuion. Whatever that means.

        I thought we learned all about final solutions in WWII ?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by haruchai ( 17472 )

          what exactly did we learn?
          never to genocide again? we appear to have failed that lesson a lot more than once

  • I just can't believe I used to look up to Musk. Like I saw his interview and genuinely thought "I want to be like him".
    My own fault. Last time I felt like that, it was an absolute fraud.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      I just can't believe I used to look up to Musk. Like I saw his interview and genuinely thought "I want to be like him".
      My own fault. Last time I felt like that, it was an absolute fraud.

      How is that your fault? I still look up to 2018 Elon Musk. And 2012 Kanye West.
      People change, not always for the best.

      • Re:I just can't believe I used to look up to Musk (Score:4, Informative)

        by dfghjk ( 711126 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2026 @05:59AM (#66117996)

        Elon Musk has never changed, and you are a sad sack for failing to realize it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Junta ( 36770 )

          To be fair, you had to be *really* paying attention. Even then, the people describing him for what he was were personal contacts and folks could write them off as jealous people left behind on Musk's success.

          His public image was more carefully curated, and the media broadly was all too happy to roll with the Phony Stark scenario, because "genius billionaire" is such a valued trope in the industry.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ledow ( 319597 )

      I can't believe anyone ever looked up to that twat.

      Honestly, working in tech, I had conversations with a number of people who should know about things, going back decades, and they absolutely couldn't get why I couldn't stand the man, or his companies, or his actions.

      People commented on me closing my Twitter (yes, Twitter) account.

      He was a clearly-identifiable twat, WAY, WAY, WAY before things like the Thai cave divers, WAY before he just bought and bankrolled companies for the sake of it, etc. Back to the

  • Elon Musk has a solid case. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Wednesday April 29, 2026 @02:22AM (#66117784)

    I clearly remember when OpenAI was inaugurated as a non-profit FOSS project and kicked off with private money by Elon Musk (IIRC a few million or so).

    From where I stand Elon Musks complaints - which have been going on for quite some time now - are on solid ground and it looks to me as though Sam Altman and his camp took Musk and the rest of the initial team for a ride and turned OpenAI into a for-profit as soon as they had a useful product on their hand. Quite a few people left OpenAI when that happened, also because they were as concerned as Musk about the risks involved with building a superhuman AI.

    If this all is the case - and, as I said it sure does look so to me - it's likely Altman and Co. are going to get sued for a bazillion dollars and OpenAI is going to be turned back into a pure FOSS project. ... That sure would be a good thing.

    • You don't remember everything. As soon as OpenAI had a useful product, Elon Musk offered to buy it out and Sam Altman refused and shopped around for a better investor with more money and less controlling stake i.e. Microsoft.

    • Yeah except that it was Musk's idea to go for-profit, so him complaining that they beat him to it doesn't really wash. I honestly can't see a judge awarding him more than some token amount.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "From where I stand ..."
      I think you mean kneel.

      Elon Musk had no complaints when his plan was a hostile takeover, his standard plan for businesses he does not found. And ask the founders of Tesla about being taken for a ride.

      "Quite a few people left OpenAI when that happened, also because they were as concerned as Musk about the risks involved with building a superhuman AI."
      Converting to for-profit and building a superhuman AI are entirely different things, not that you would understand that. Also, OpenAI

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Musk's contribution was significant, but there was also lots of money from others originally too, and he pulled out long before they went really big. Microsoft are probably the biggest contributor prior to 2020. I think it won't be as clear-cut as you think and it certainly won't result in them going FOSS - that's a pipe-dream. He will probably get some amount of compensation up to the amount he invested originally - measured in millions up to around 25 million.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Turning a project that size into a FOSS project would kill it. FOSS projects need to start small and grow a community of support. It would be possible to turn it into an OSS project, develop a community, and then spin off as FOSS parts of it that could later merge, but that's *extremely* unlikely...and would probably take decades.

      More plausible would be to publish the current version as a working snapshot under a FOSS license, but for the company to maintain copyright ownership, so they could continue to

  • I bet OpenAI wouldn't have accepted Musk's backing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2026 @02:27AM (#66117790)

    if they had known he'd turn into a raging Nazi.

    Then again, they probably would've. It's not like billionaires have any principles...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      There are billionaires that refuse to associate with anything related to Elon Musk, specifically because he is so litigious. No one enjoys being the victim, even the worst sociopaths in society think Elon Musk is a place they won't go.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Arrogant-Bastard ( 141720 )
        Correct. There are a lot of psychotic and sociopathic billionaires, and even within that group there are people who refuse to have anything to do with Nazi Elon Musk. He is one of the most purely evil people alive on this planet today -- and there's a lot of competition for that.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          He's evil, but I'm not sure he's in the running for most evil.
          The problem is that he's also extremely powerful, and is surrounded by people (and machines) that reinforce his delusions. So even minor evils get magnified into atrocities.

  • We know that Musk initially intended it to be non-profit, but at some point he made it clear that it was going to shift to a for-profit model.
     
    This happened around the time the Google transformers paper came out when it suddenly became clear the tech was actually right around the corner.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "We know that Musk initially intended it to be non-profit, but at some point he made it clear that it was going to shift to a for-profit model."

      Elon Musk never controlled OpenAI, what he claims was his "intention" is irrelevant. And the point you referred to was planned to be after Musk seized control.

      "...when it suddenly became clear the tech was actually right around the corner."

      That is not clear, even today. Musk and Altman hope so and say so publicly, but they are both pathalogical liars. For these pe

  • So there are people are literally, anti-human? Like WTF? What is going on?

    • Aliens walking among us openly.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      You are unfamiliar with MAGA? You are in the way of a few people owning everything. What is genocide if it is not, literally, anti-human?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ebyrob ( 165903 )

      > So there are people are literally, anti-human?

      People? I think you're using that term pretty loosely here. Since when are the take me to your leaders with absolute power corrupting absolutely actually "people" anymore?

    • A LOT of these AI bros are excited to be creating our replacement.

      That's how you know that even if they're intelligent, they're also dumbfucks.

      Weird how people can be both of those things at once, but sadly there's ample evidence.

  • which piece of scum's side to I take and am I allowed to show in disinfectatant afterwards?

  • Regardless of which side you are on (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rnmartinez ( 968929 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2026 @07:09AM (#66118042)
    This sets a dangerous precedent - get government funds, donations, partnerships with univerisities and non-profits, get sees money for free, then give absolutely nothing back and become a for profit without repayment or consequences?

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