Musk has never been afraid of competition; his character is to fight to the end. What he fears is not being able to find a way to break through in a passive situation.
Author: Zhao Weiwei, Blue Hole Business
"OpenAI and @Sam (Altman)'s collaborative approach to artificial intelligence is something I support, as it can bring the best results for humanity," said Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, recently.
This clearly puts him on the opposite side of Musk. Like Musk, he was once an angel investor in OpenAI and co-founded the nonprofit artificial intelligence research lab to counter Google's strong position in the field. However, later, both Musk and Hoffman left OpenAI to establish their own AI companies.
Unlike Hoffman's sentimental view of OpenAI, Musk has completely severed ties with the organization.
Starting last year, Musk saw OpenAI leaning towards the big company Microsoft. He first publicly called for a pause on research into AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 for at least six months. Later, Musk founded his own AI company, xAI, and released its first AI model, "Grok," in November last year, aiming to "understand the true nature of the universe," but it is still far from OpenAI's capabilities.
Not long ago, an agitated Musk took OpenAI to court, fully aware that it would provoke a fierce counterattack from OpenAI.
Musk officially sued OpenAI, demanding that it restore its open-source status and prohibit the company and its CEO Sam Altman, along with Microsoft, from profiting from AI technology. In response, OpenAI refuted Musk's claims in an official blog post, listing historical emails from that time to counter Musk: the decision to create a for-profit entity was made together, and it was only because Musk's suggestion to merge OpenAI into Tesla was not adopted that he left OpenAI.
In simple terms, Musk's lawsuit escalates the issue, accusing OpenAI of betraying its original ideals; OpenAI's rebuttal grounds the issue: you are merely pursuing competitive interests.
Is Musk anxious?
Looking back at the lawsuits Musk has been involved in over the past decade, it is not difficult to see that resorting to the courts is just one of his business competition strategies. Musk has never been afraid of competition; his character is to fight to the end. What he fears is not being able to find a way to break through in a passive situation.
01 Old Grudges
Past friendships often seem fragile in the face of current business interests and goals.
On the day Musk officially sued OpenAI, Sam Altman stated in an internal memo to OpenAI employees, "The idea that benefiting humanity is somewhat inconsistent with entrepreneurship is confusing; I miss the old Musk."
"Personally, it's sad," said Altman, who is 14 years younger than Musk. Altman has always viewed Musk as a personal hero, someone who competes by building better technology, a builder, someone he hoped would stand by their side.
Altman misses the old Musk, and Musk similarly misses the old OpenAI.
In the 46-page lawsuit Musk filed against OpenAI, he listed numerous "charges" against OpenAI, such as violating the founding agreement in pursuit of commercial interests. Musk believes that OpenAI has become a closed-source subsidiary of the world's largest tech company, Microsoft. He argues that the current members of the OpenAI board are all handpicked by Altman and approved by Microsoft, so OpenAI's purpose is no longer to benefit humanity but to maximize Microsoft's interests.
From the demands in the lawsuit, it appears Musk wants OpenAI to return to its original mission before commercialization.
First, he wants OpenAI to be open-source, providing the developed AI research technology to the public, while also prohibiting the defendants from using OpenAI and its assets to continue profiting. Secondly, he seeks a ruling that GPT-4 and the more advanced GPT-Q are general artificial intelligence (AGI) and cannot be used by Microsoft. Additionally, Musk is also seeking compensation for his past losses.
The lawsuit states that between 2016 and September 2020, Musk donated over $44 million to OpenAI. However, according to evidence released by OpenAI, Musk raised less than $45 million, while other supporters, including Hoffman, contributed over $90 million.
In OpenAI's rebuttal article, it further pointed out the key reason for Musk's split from OpenAI: control.
In 2017, OpenAI and Musk reached a consensus to establish a for-profit entity as the next strategic move. "Musk wanted to gain a majority stake, control the board, and serve as CEO. During this time, he suspended the funding he originally planned to provide. Fortunately, Reid Hoffman generously filled the funding gap for our salaries and operations."
Musk's suggestion at that time is still unacceptable today. "In early February 2018, Musk forwarded us an email suggesting that OpenAI should treat Tesla as its cash cow, commenting that Tesla is the only entity with a chance to compete with Google. Even so, the possibility of competing with Google is very small, but at least it's not zero."
In fact, according to descriptions in "The Musk Biography," after Musk parted ways with OpenAI, he poached OpenAI's experts in deep learning and computer vision, such as Andrej Karpathy, to lead Tesla's AI project.
"We realized that Tesla would become an AI company and would compete with OpenAI for similar talent," Altman said. "This made some people on our team very angry, but I completely understand how it happened." Later, in 2023, Altman managed to turn the tables: when Karpathy was exhausted from Musk's demands, he extended an olive branch and brought Karpathy back.
Thus, the unresolved old grudges are key to the renewed controversy between Musk and OpenAI. Past grievances have not been resolved, and the new competition for general artificial intelligence has added fuel to the fire between the two.
02 New Situation Unresolved
Musk's announced Grok V1.5 chatbot has yet to be released; he mentioned on Twitter back on February 22 that it would be released in early March, two weeks later.
Since its launch in November last year, the Grok chatbot has not generated much attention in the industry. The AI company behind Grok, xAI, was established last July and is essentially a competitor to OpenAI. In Musk's words, competition makes companies honest, and he supports competition.
Grok's biggest competitive advantage is the Twitter acquisition by Musk, which allows Grok to train on content from Twitter, including over a trillion tweets published over the years and an additional 500 million tweets added daily. Of course, these are benefits Musk realized only after acquiring Twitter.
However, paradoxically, Musk vocally opposes OpenAI's commercialization, yet his own AI model Grok is closely tied to Twitter's commercialization from the start. Only Twitter's Premium+ subscribers can use it, and becoming a Premium+ subscriber requires a monthly payment of $16.
According to information released by xAI, all 12 members of the xAI team are male, having previously worked at leading companies like DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Tesla, and renowned academic institutions, participating in the development of projects like AlphaStar, AlphaCode, Inception, Minerva, GPT-3.5, and GPT-4.
However, in terms of talent density, xAI still lags behind industry leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic. Currently, the recognized top tier of large models is primarily concentrated in OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, which was founded by former OpenAI members. Anthropic has also received investments from Amazon and Google, with internet giants already establishing their positions.
More importantly, the competition for large models in Silicon Valley has begun to accelerate.
In February of this year, Google released the new Gemini 1.5 AI model and quickly open-sourced the lightweight open-source large model Gemma. This series of actions, similar to OpenAI's release of the text-to-video model Sora, announces their capabilities in the general large model field and has caused a stir in the industry.
In contrast, Musk, amidst this fervent AI wave, is no longer the standout figure. "The Musk Biography" once defined him as: with OpenAI and Google competing, a third gladiator needs to enter the arena—one focused on AI safety and dedicated to protecting humanity.
Musk was once very confident; he expressed in "The Musk Biography": "The AI capabilities Tesla has accumulated in the real world are underestimated. Imagine if Tesla and OpenAI had to swap tasks, they would make self-driving vehicles while we make large language model chatbots. Who would win? Of course, it would be us."
Confidence aside, methods are methods.
As confident as Musk is, shortly after OpenAI released ChatGPT, he cut off OpenAI's access to Twitter's data pipeline, limiting the opponent's means to guard against future threats. Musk has never been soft-hearted, so the lawsuit against OpenAI can still be seen as one of Musk's strategies to restrict his competitors.
In fact, the Grok chatbot currently struggles to match Musk's vision. Musk stated at its launch that xAI's Grok is very important for humanity and will help humans explore the "greatest truth" and the "essence of the universe." He also took the opportunity to criticize his competitors, stating that OpenAI and Google's Gemini would only lead humanity astray.
Additionally, there are reports that Musk's xAI is preparing for a new round of financing, planning to raise $1 billion through equity financing at a valuation of $15 billion to $20 billion.
Musk later denied this news, but it is undeniable that the consumption of billions of dollars is necessary for large models. He has recently been posting job openings for xAI on Twitter, and how xAI competes with peers like OpenAI remains a troubling issue for him.
03 Lawsuit—A Strategy Not to Lose
Controversies surrounding Musk have been ongoing, and throughout his entrepreneurial and business battles, resorting to the courts has often been one of his habitual strategies for problem-solving, reflecting the intensifying competition in the industry. Fundamentally, this indicates that Musk is genuinely angry.
For instance, during Tesla's early days, he sued renowned automotive designer Henrik Fisker.
At that time, Musk approached Fisker to design the later Model S, but the designs Fisker delivered did not align with Tesla's expectations. Later, Musk learned that while helping Tesla with the designs, Fisker was also establishing an electric vehicle company and had incorporated the Tesla product concepts Musk shared with him into his new company's business plan.
Musk could not tolerate such betrayal. Although Tesla ultimately lost the lawsuit and was ordered to pay Fisker $1.14 million in legal fees and costs, Fisker's electric vehicle company quickly rose to prominence, even seizing government low-interest loans that could have belonged to Tesla. However, Fisker's startup collapsed in 2013, and the company filed for bankruptcy, forcing Fisker to resign.
In the space competition, Musk's SpaceX also sued Bezos's Blue Origin.
At that time, both Amazon founder Bezos and Musk were working on reusable rockets. In 2014, Bezos's Blue Origin applied for a U.S. patent titled "Landing a Space Launch Vehicle on a Floating Platform," which described a method for landing and recovering certain stages of a booster and other components on a sea platform.
Upon seeing the patent, Musk was furious and chose to take legal action. He argued that the method of landing at sea had been discussed for half a century and appeared in many fictional films, stating, "But we have so much technology available now; to keep rehashing the same old ideas is insane. It's absurd to patent something that has been discussed for half a century."
This lawsuit intensified the competition between Musk and Bezos in the realm of space rockets, resulting in Bezos agreeing to withdraw the patent after being sued by SpaceX.
In the dramatic saga of Musk's acquisition of Twitter in 2022, his proactive lawsuits to intimidate the other party were also one of Musk's psychological warfare tactics.
At that time, Musk demanded a reduction in the acquisition price during the Twitter buyout negotiations, but progress was minimal. Twitter's proposal allowed for a 4% reduction in the $44 billion price, but Musk insisted on a 10% reduction, otherwise, he would not consider it. In the psychological tug-of-war between the two parties, Twitter's executives and board insisted that no matter how negotiations went, they had to protect themselves from potential lawsuits from Musk in the future.
"We will never let them get legal immunity," Musk said emotionally at the time. "If we are to hold them accountable, then unless they are dead, we will not let any of them off the hook."
Musk once considered suing Twitter because he believed the board and management had lied about the bot accounts. However, his lawyers ultimately persuaded him that going to court would likely result in a loss, and the best course of action was to complete the deal under the original $44 billion terms. In the end, Musk took over Twitter, achieving his acquisition goal, while the former CEO of Twitter and others were dismissed.
Looking at Musk's lawsuits involving Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter, there have been wins, losses, and withdrawals, but the core strategy has remained unchanged: to curb competitors and increase his odds through legal self-defense in unfavorable competitive situations, turning a passive scenario into an active offense.
Lawsuits are one of the means to achieve competitive objectives; even if he loses, this public counterattack to defend his interests aligns with his consistent character of fighting to the end. Now, with the lawsuit against OpenAI, it further emphasizes Musk's stance in the battle over artificial intelligence: he cannot afford to lose.
After OpenAI officially responded to Musk's lawsuit, he did not retaliate on Twitter; the facts and positions from all sides are already clear. As for the outcome, we must wait for the final ruling, which is bound to be as lengthy as the evolution of general artificial intelligence. For now, we still need to see how capable xAI's Grok chatbot is.
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