Elon Musk

Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as part of a broader effort to ensure that advanced AI development was not concentrated solely within profit-driven corporations. At the time of OpenAI's founding, Musk was already CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and was among the most publicly vocal advocates for AI safety — famously calling artificial intelligence humanity's greatest existential risk and comparing AI development to 'summoning the demon.' He pledged $100 million to OpenAI's initial capitalization and served as a board co-chair until his resignation in February 2018, which was attributed publicly to potential conflicts of interest with Tesla's autonomous vehicle AI work.

Elon Musk's relationship with OpenAI is one of the most complicated and publicly litigated founder-company relationships in technology history. After departing the board in 2018, Musk remained publicly supportive of AI safety concerns but grew increasingly critical of OpenAI's commercial direction and its partnership with Microsoft. In 2023, Musk founded xAI, a direct competitor, and launched the Grok AI assistant through the X platform. In 2024, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Greg Brockman alleging that the company had breached its founding mission by prioritizing profits over humanity's benefit and by entering into what he characterized as an improper relationship with Microsoft. OpenAI responded by publishing a trove of emails purporting to show that Musk had himself sought majority control of the organization. The legal dispute remained ongoing as of mid-2025 and has introduced regulatory and reputational complications into OpenAI's for-profit restructuring process.