Elon Musk’s Final Push to Control OpenAI: Recruit Altman to Tesla

Months before stepping down from OpenAI’s board in early 2018, Elon Musk made a direct play to bring Sam Altman into Tesla’s orbit. Court documents and testimony revealed Wednesday that Musk offered Altman a Tesla board seat as part of a bid to establish a “world-class AI lab” within the electric car company. The evidence emerged during the cross-examination of Shivon Zilis, a former OpenAI adviser and board member who also shares four children with Musk. The revelations came on the third day of the Musk v. Altman trial in federal court.

At the heart of Musk’s lawsuit is the accusation that Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman hijacked a nonprofit mission. Musk claims his $38 million investment was used to build what is now a for-profit enterprise valued at over $800 billion. On Wednesday, Musk’s legal team played video depositions from former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and ex-board member Helen Toner, aiming to paint Altman as someone with a pattern of deception.

OpenAI’s attorneys, however, have turned the spotlight back on Musk. They argue his lawsuit stems from “sour grapes” after failing to take control of OpenAI in 2017. Since then, Musk launched his own for-profit AI venture. During Zilis’ testimony, OpenAI’s lawyers introduced evidence suggesting Musk had long plotted to absorb OpenAI into Tesla. Zilis, who served as a key liaison between Musk and Altman, was questioned about her role in those discussions.

A text from February 2018 showed Zilis asking Altman, “Did you think through a B Corp subsidiary of Tesla?” Outside the courthouse, OpenAI attorney William Savitt stated, “There was documentary evidence that, at several points, Mr. Musk had contemplated seeking to join Sam Altman to the board and offered that option. It was part of Mr. Musk’s effort to corrupt OpenAI and absorb it into Tesla. He was trying to get Altman to abandon the mission and be part of Tesla.”

Further evidence included a November 2017 email from Zilis to Tesla’s VP of communications, Sarah O’Brien, containing a draft FAQ for a planned Tesla event at the NeurIPS AI conference. The draft read, “The purpose of this event is to share that Tesla is building a world leading AI lab which will rival the likes of Google / DeepMind and Facebook AI Research.” It added, “One major issue for Tesla is when people think of Elon and AI, they think of OpenAI.”

A section labeled “Who?” listed Musk, former OpenAI researcher Andrej Karpathy, and Altman’s name with two question marks beside it. Handwritten notes on the FAQ suggested Altman could moderate the event, which “could be a forcing function for Sam to commit to TeslaAI.” Another note indicated that Tesla AI’s “strategy had yet to be defined and some of it may be deeply proprietary.”

Zilis testified that Altman never joined Tesla and that both the AI lab and the NeurIPS event were scrapped. She also confirmed that Musk had reached out to Karpathy about recruiting him. Savitt told reporters that Zilis’ testimony on Karpathy is “directly contrary to what Mr. Musk told the jury just a few days ago.” Earlier in the trial, Musk had testified that Karpathy left OpenAI of his own accord.