March 26, 2023
1 min read

Musk tried to take over OpenAI in 2018, but failed

According to a Semafor report, he also reneged on a promise to supply $1 billion in funding, contributing only $100 million before he walked…reports Asian Lite News

Elon Musk tried to take control of OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, in early 2018 but Sam Altman and OpenAI’s other founders rejected Musk’s proposal.

Musk, in turn, walked away from the company and reneged on a massive planned donation, reports Semafor. Musk told Altman that he believed the “venture had fallen fatally behind Google”.

But the Twitter CEO failed to convince OpenAI founders to take over the AI chatbot ChatGPT creator. When Musk walked away, he resigned from its board in 2018 citing a conflict of interest with his work at Tesla.

According to a Semafor report, he also reneged on a promise to supply $1 billion in funding, contributing only $100 million before he walked.

This left OpenAI with “no ability to pay the astronomical fees associated with training AI models on supercomputers”.

In March, 2019, OpenAI announced it was creating a for-profit entity so that it could raise enough money to pay for the compute power.

“We want to increase our ability to raise capital while still serving our mission, and no pre-existing legal structure we know of strikes the right balance,” the company wrote at the time.

Less than six months later, Microsoft infused $1 billion in OpenAI, and the rest is history. They built a supercomputer to train massive models that eventually created ChatGPT and the image generator DALL-E.

The latest language model, GPT-4, has 1 trillion parameters. Musk has now raised questions over how a non-profit has become a $30 billion maximum-profit company for Satya Nadella-run tech giant.

“I’m still confused as to how a non-profit to which I donated $100 million somehow became a $30 billion market cap for-profit. If this is legal, why doesn’t everyone do it?” he quipped.

Musk has also paused OpenAI access to Twitter database. The AI chatbot ChatGPT is now a rage and Microsoft has infused $10 billion into it to make it more useful for across industries.

ALSO READ-AI one of biggest risks to civilisation, warns Elon Musk

Previous Story

Jaishankar slams differential standards of security

Next Story

ChatGPT bug may have exposed payment information

Latest from -Top News

G7 Summit Eyes Energy Security

Monday’s schedule includes a 90-minute session among G7 leaders to discuss the global economic outlook…reports Asian Lite News The Group of Seven (G7) summit unveiled its slimmed-down agenda, prioritising discussions on the

Modi Mania Grips Canada

This is PM Modi’s first visit to Canada after a year marked by diplomatic tensions…reports Asian Lite News As Prime Minister Narendra Modi gears up for his visit to Canada for the

Modi’s 3-Nation Mission Begins

This three-nation tour is also an opportunity to thank partner countries for their steadfast support to India in our fight against cross-border terrorism…reports Asian Lite News Ahead of his departure for a

Pentagon Labels China Top Threat

Hegseth told a House defence panel that Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific to assert regional and global dominance. US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth stated on Tuesday that China

NTSB to probe Air India crash

The National Transportation Safety Board stated that as per protocols, all information on the investigation will be provided by India National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), an independent US government agency tasked with
Go toTop

Don't Miss

US Lawmakers Grill Big Tech Leaders on AI Regulation

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Alphabet

Twitter CEO worried about firm’s future, not his job

Agrawal has said that “despite the noise” coming from Musk