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How Elon Musk left OpenAI, according to Greg Brockman Tim Fernholz 11:23 AM PDT · May 6, 2026 In late August 2017, key figures at OpenAI (then a small nonprofit research lab) gathered to discuss how they would create a for-profit to commercialize its technology and raise the funds needed to realize AGI.
Elon Musk was demanding full control of the company and had just given each of his co-founders a Tesla Model 3. CTO Greg Brockman said he saw that as way of buttering them up at a time when Musk and Sam Altman were vying to win support for their respective visions of the company’s future. OpenAI’s head of research, Ilya Sutskever, had commissioned a painting of a Tesla to give Musk during the meeting as a friendly gesture.
The conversation didn’t follow that mood: When Musk was told the others would not accede to his demand for control of the company, Brockman said he got angry and upset. He sat for several minutes thinking quietly.
Then, in Brockman’s telling, Musk said, “I decline.” The SpaceX and Tesla founder “stood up and stormed around the table…I thought he was going to hit me. He grabbed the painting and started to storm out of the room. And then he turned around and said, ‘When will you be departing OpenAI?’”
Brockman and Sutskever didn’t leave or commit to Musk’s vision. Musk stopped his regular donations to the company’s operating budget, and within six months, he would leave the board, though he paid for office space the company shared with Neuralink until 2020.
As today’s legal battle over the future of OpenAI proceeds, scrutiny has settled on a key period in 2017 when the organization’s original co-founders disagreed about who would control its future, eventually bringing us Musk’s lawsuit against his co-founders.
We have yet to hear from Sam Altman, but OpenAI president Greg Brockman testified for two days, often referencing a personal journal that offers a rare insight into what it’s like to be a 30-year-old tech executive in a pitched battle with Elon Musk.
Techcrunch event This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. San Francisco, CA | October 13-15, 2026 REGISTER NOW “It’s very painful,” Brockman said of the publicity around the journal, which he called “deeply personal writings that were never meant for the world to see. [But] there’s nothing in there I’m ashamed of.”
Cutthroat negotiations between startup founders are rarely shared so publicly, especially when a company becomes as world-changing as OpenAI.
We saw a recent taste of this rancor when OpenAI’s lawyers shared a text message Musk sent to Brockman two days before the trial began: “By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be.”
The jury won’t see that note, but Musk’s lawyers have done their best to realize its spirit. They are trying to show the court that Altman and Brockman “stole a charity,” while OpenAI’s legal team tries to show that Musk had the exact same plan in mind.
The inciting incident for all of this was when an OpenAI model defeated the top human player in the video game DOTA II. Brockman said that convinced everyone in the organization that compute was the key resource to create powerful AI tools, but that fundraising purely as a nonprofit would be insufficient.
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