Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
OpenAI president Greg Brockman in court on Monday was forced to defend diary entries that appeared to show he was preoccupied by money during talks to convert the AI lab into a for-profit, as he revealed his personal stake was now worth almost $30bn.
Brockman told the jury the comments were born of “frustration” with co-founder Elon Musk during a tussle for control of OpenAI in 2017.
He argued his nearly $30bn stake was justified by the “blood, sweat and tears” he and chief executive Sam Altman expended to grow the start-up to a valuation of $852bn, which in turn has endowed its non-profit arm with more than $150bn in resources.
Musk’s lawsuit argues he was tricked into donating money to help launch OpenAI and seeks to unwind its restructuring as a for-profit and oust Brockman and Altman. It threatens to upend OpenAI’s ambitions for a trillion-dollar initial public offering.
Extracts from Brockman’s diary, uncovered during pre-trial discovery, have emerged as a weakness for OpenAI’s case.
On Monday, he was grilled by Musk’s lawyer, Steven Molo, about the meaning of several entries from 2017.
“[I] can’t see us turning this into a for-profit without a nasty fight,” one entry read. “[Musk’s] story will correctly be that we weren’t honest with him in the end about still wanting to do for profit just without him.”
“Another realisation from this is that it’d be wrong to steal the non-profit from him,” Brockman wrote in another entry. “That’d be pretty morally bankrupt. And he’s really not an idiot.”
Brockman told the court that the comments were “an expression of frustration and not a plan” as negotiations with Musk dragged on.
The world’s richest man was at the time threatening to quit OpenAI and start a rival company unless he was given full control or allowed to merge it with his carmaker Tesla.
Musk’s lawyer also zeroed in on entries he said showed Brockman was motivated by money rather than the stated mission of the non-profit to develop artificial general intelligence for the benefit of humanity.
“This is the only chance we have to get out from Elon . . . Financially, what will take me to $1bn?” Brockman wrote in September 2017.
Molo also pointed to a passage where Brockman wrote: “we’ve been thinking that maybe we should just flip to a for-profit. Making the money for us sounds great and all” and “it would be nice to be making the billions”.
Brockman on Monday said that “solving for the mission has always been my primary motivation”, but conceded that “a secondary motivation certainly is compensation”. He denied that being awarded a stake worth almost $30bn breached his fiduciary duties as a former board member of the non-profit.
In another tense exchange, Molo asked Brockman if he should donate $29bn back to the non-profit, leaving him only with the $1bn that he said he would be “good” with.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” Brockman said. He added that accusations that he had taken money from a charity were a “mischaracterisation of what we’re doing”.
Musk’s legal team also quizzed Brockman over an email in 2015 seeking donations for OpenAI, where he promised to make a $100,000 contribution himself that was never made.
Brockman said he waited for Altman to tell him when to make the donation and would still be willing to make good on it today.
Earlier in the day, it was revealed that Musk threatened to make Altman and Brockman “the most hated men in America” after they rebuffed the billionaire’s overtures for eleventh-hour settlement talks in his case against the AI lab.
Musk sent a text to Brockman on April 25, the weekend before the trial began last Monday, to “gauge interest in settlement”, according to a filing by OpenAI’s lawyers.
After Brockman suggested each side drop its claims, according to the filing, Musk replied by text: “By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be.”
Microsoft — which owns a 27 per cent stake worth $135bn — is also accused of “aiding and abetting” the start-up’s conduct. The defendants deny all claims.