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Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google (cnbc.com) 83

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:5, 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:5, 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.

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

      by AleRunner ( 4556245 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2026 @02:41AM (#66117800)

      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 software. It encourages more rug-pulling.

      Musk, has uh, his problems, but this is one we want him to win.

      • Re:So since you got kicked out of the non-profit - (Score:5, 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.

        • While this is completely true, we still should want this principle to win even if Leon is a hypocrite whose actions have helped to kill tens of thousands of people [harvard.edu] and we would like to see him test pilot a leaky rocket.

          If we can get our government back then we can use the same principle against him in the future if necessary. If we can't, then we've got bigger problems.

      • 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"?

        • 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"?

          Yes, I think that's a good summary of this particular situation. Both of the parties here are evil, Musk is clearly showing how you should never partner with him and OpenAI is getting what they deserve for knowingly setting up in that context. However it misses the wider context that there are also much more other different competition out there. If OpenAI dies completely, but their systems are released as Open Source and inform systems like ollama, openclaw and so on then that's a net gain.

          Even if OpenAI s

          • Something to consider, by public good, OpenAI's original charter is to develop AGI that benefits all of humanity, not just a small group. Not to share an open source free to use coding model.

            Small problem, as noble as their non-profit charter sounds, I don't have the faintest idea what that actually looks like. What I do know, is providing a free coding model is not it, and neither is selling lots of coding model subscriptions. One of those could at least possibly fund the actual mission, one is sort of poi

      • 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

        • Largely I agree, but the basic point is that they were all trying to take advantage of public good statements and identity to get more personal profit. It's good for the public if the end result is that the public is protected over everyone involved and, next time that it's Musk trying to take away from the public good he also doesn't get away with it.

  • meant to whitewash the ketamine Nazi.

    Okay, elona, now fuck off.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      No. Basically it's a move to handicap competition. But he's also trying to get any other advantages he can out of it.

  • "nonprofit, open source alternative to Google"

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

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 )

      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:3)

      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 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tonymercmobily ( 658708 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2026 @01:30AM (#66117754) Homepage Journal

    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, Informative)

      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:5, 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.

      • Ego and hubris are the most addictive drugs on the planet. The world is full of cautionary tales and yet the majority of people still aspire to achieve conditions that often lead to that level of sycophancy, delusion, and addiction to fleeting approval from a fickle fanbase.

      • 2018 Elon Musk was a kook then, you just didn't realize it because he pretended to be a good guy. He had a great PR person and fired them shortly afterwards.

        Musk's bogus hyperloop system, designed to FUD CaHSR (and part of a reason why the costs keep going up for the latter - it could have been built by now, at something close to the original estimates, if the NIMBY and anti-rail forces hadn't had constant support) dates to 2013. At that point, any nerd should have been able to figure out that he was full o

    • Re:I just can't believe I used to look up to Musk (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ledow ( 319597 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2026 @08:24AM (#66118098) Homepage

      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 "I founded Paypal" days (no, you didn't).

      Sorry but like Trump - I judge you for EVER having giving a damn about anything the man has ever said. Or almost any "tech celebrity" come to that, especially the ones - like Musk, Jobs, Bezos, etc. - with absolulely zero personal technical knowledge, expertise or skill.

      They're salesman. Bad ones. And people fall for it like they fall for dodgy car dealership patter all the time. And I honestly can't fathom how people DON'T SEE THAT.

      • They're salesman. Bad ones. And people fall for it

        tbf that's kind of the definition of a good salesman!

  • Elon Musk has a solid case. (Score:5, Interesting)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by junglee_iitk ( 651040 )

      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

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by argStyopa ( 232550 )

      You neglected to factor in the fact the Musk - for ideological reasons, let's be clear - is hated almost as much as the Orange Tyrant on slashdot.

      Meaning that facts-be-damned, Elon MUST somehow be made the bad guy. Even if that's irrelevant.
      The simplest explanation - that he tossed some $ at an opensource competitor to Google, and then this entity took his $ and turned for-profit - must be discarded.

      Look at the replies to your comment.
      - "well Musk tried to buy it later" how does this matter to whether a bu

      • LOL "flamebait" for describing the immediate replies accurately.

        Pardon me for calling a spade a spade. I didn't mean to offend.

  • 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:3, 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.

  • There's a conflicting timeline. (Score:3)

    by outsider007 ( 115534 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2026 @02:45AM (#66117804)

    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.

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

      It sounds like you simply haven't experienced enough of the human race and what it entails yet. Give it time. You'll get there.

  • 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:5, Insightful)

    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?
    • The structure up until yesterday was weird. OpenAI was two companies, a non-profit foundation that owned a for-profit subsidiary. They did that because they had no way of raising sufficient capital without offering some return on investment to their funders. Musk acknowledged that in emails and texts that have been made public through discovery. His solution was to fold OpenAI into Tesla so that he would control it in its entirety, something that the rest of the board and executive team did not approve of.
  • Is that he wanted Tesla to acquire OpenAI, which would, by definition, turn it into a for-profit entity. When the rest of the board and executive team didn't bite, he threw a hissy fit and walked away.

  • Has Musk ever started a non-profit? I call bullshit — I don't believe Musk has ever had any interest in a non-profit. It's just not in his nature.

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