Semafor reports that Tesla Chief and Twitter owner Elon Musk tried to take over ChatGPT creator OpenAI in 2018.
Musk was part of a small group that founded the AI lab in 2015 as a nonprofit. Yet, by early 2018, Musk was worried the company was falling behind Google.
Musk then offered to take direct control of OpenAI and run it himself but was rejected by other OpenAI founders including Sam Altman, now the firm’s CEO, and Greg Brockman, now its president, Semafor reports.
Semafor says Musk reneged on a promise to supply $1 billion in funding, contributing only $100 million before he walked.
By 2019, OpenAI announced it was creating a new for-profit entity to fund its research and quickly became closely entangled with Microsoft, which supplied billions in funding and resources while securing exclusive licenses to use OpenAI’s tech in its products.
