Elon Musk Wanted OpenAI to Go Commercial, Greg Brockman Testifies

In the summer of 2017, OpenAI built an artificial intelligence system that could play a popular video game called Defense of the Ancients, known as Dota.

Inside a stadium in Seattle with more than 20,000 spectators, this A.I. system won an international Dota tournament, beating many of the world’s best players. When OpenAI’s president, Greg Brockman, emailed Elon Musk about the win, the tech mogul was elated. “Time to make the next step for OpenAI. This is the triggering event,” said Mr. Musk, who was backing OpenAI financially.

The next day, Mr. Brockman met Mr. Musk and his chief of staff, Shivon Zilis, and several others at a party house that Mr. Musk had recently purchased just south of the city. There, they began discussing ways of transforming OpenAI into a for-profit company, according to testimony by Mr. Brockman and other evidence presented on Tuesday in the blockbuster trial that pits Mr. Musk against the maker of ChatGPT.

Mr. Musk has sued OpenAI, accusing Mr. Brockman and its chief executive, Sam Altman, of breaching the A.I. lab’s founding contract by putting commercial gain over the public good. He is asking for $150 billion in damages and a court order that would unwind the for-profit company that OpenAI created last year. He also wants an order removing Mr. Altman from the OpenAI board of directors.

Mr. Musk founded OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015 alongside Mr. Brockman, Mr. Altman and a group of A.I. researchers, before leaving the organization. Mr. Altman and the other founders then attached a for-profit company to the A.I. lab and began raising billions of dollars from Microsoft and other investors.