Musk once demanded 51.2% stake and offered SpaceX as payment — OpenAI founding emails fully exposed in court

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The jury trial for Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI for "betraying the mission of benefiting all humanity with AGI" began this week. The court presented emails and documents from 2015–2017, including Musk’s proposal to rename the company Freemind, his personal request to Jensen Huang for priority access to supercomputers, and a 2017 equity table showing he had requested a 51.2% stake at the time. (Previous coverage: OpenAI releases five AGI constitutions: AI cannot be monopolized by a few, sacrifice can lead to more resilience) (Background: Quick look at the Magnificent Seven earnings: Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta all beat Q1 expectations! Cloud and AI businesses shine) The century-defining lawsuit between Musk and OpenAI is ongoing, with the court presenting emails from 2015–2017, providing a deeper look into the unknown secrets of the company's early days. In a June 2015 email presented in court, Altman proposed a five-point establishment plan to Musk. The proposed governance committee included Altman, Musk, Bill Gates, Pierre Omidyar, and Dustin Moskovitz, with the mission defined as "building the first general AI with the goal of individual empowerment — a safer, decentralized future." Musk’s reply at the time was just one sentence: "Agree on all." In November of the same year, Musk proposed in another email to name the company Freemind, explaining that the name represented "distributing AI widely to all humanity, contrary to DeepMind’s one-ring-to-rule-them-all approach." He also proposed a detail: employees could choose to convert their salaries into SpaceX stock, reasoning that "SpaceX is a private company, I can do almost whatever I want." On December 8, 2015, OpenAI was officially established. The founding documents presented in court stated: "The organization's purpose is to ensure AGI benefits all humanity. It is not formed for any individual's private gain." This wording is the core basis of Musk’s current legal argument: he claims that OpenAI’s subsequent commercialization path deviated from this commitment. In April 2016, an email from Musk to Jensen Huang was introduced in court. In the letter, Musk requested the Nvidia CEO to allow OpenAI to purchase a supercomputer, specifically emphasizing: "OpenAI has nothing to do with Tesla; it is a non-profit organization funded by me and a few friends." Jensen Huang replied: "I will make sure OpenAI gets one of them." The photo of Jensen Huang delivering the hardware in person with Musk standing by has become a visual record of this relationship. The 2017 rift: 51.2% and the "non-negotiable" clash However, the consensus from the establishment period showed a clear fracture in 2017. In an August 2017 email presented in court, Musk’s chief of staff, Shivon Zilis, reported on a meeting with Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever. The two co-founders expressed concerns about the concentration of Musk’s shareholding and proposed a condition they called "non-negotiable": "Regardless of the fate of the three (Greg, Ilya, Sam), there must be an agreement to ensure that after an initial period of 2 to 3 years, the control of AGI is decentralized." The gap between this condition and Musk’s actual position at the time was quantified in a document from a month later. The September 2017 equity table presented in court was sent by Birchall (manager of Musk’s family office), showing Musk’s shareholding at 51.2%, with Altman, Sutskever, and Brockman each at 11.01%. The person who agreed to decentralized control had designed a structure where one person held more than half the shares. This figure complicates the debate between the two sides regarding "who is actually betraying the mission." Faced with the core demand relayed by Zilis, Musk’s response was: "Too annoying, please encourage them to start their own company, I’ve had enough." Since then, Musk and OpenAI have officially parted ways. Advisory jury in court The lawsuit originally had 26 allegations, but before entering the trial stage, Musk focused his fire on two: unjust enrichment and breach of charitable trust. The defendants include Altman, Brockman, and Microsoft. The trial by a 9-person jury is expected to last 2 to 3 weeks, with Judge Gonzalez Rogers expected to make a ruling in mid-May. However, it is worth noting that the jury’s verdict is advisory in nature, and the final decision-making power remains with the judge. The final verdict will be revealed soon.

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