Elon Musk vs Sam Altman: The OpenAI Fight Is Bigger Than Two Tech Billionaires
There was a time when OpenAI looked like one of the most idealistic projects in Silicon Valley.
The pitch was simple: artificial intelligence was becoming too powerful to be controlled only by private corporations. If AGI ever became real, it should benefit humanity, not just shareholders.
That was the idea Elon Musk believed he was supporting when OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit. He was not the only founder, of course. Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever and others were part of the early story too. But Musk brought something very important to the table: money, attention, credibility and a serious fear that Google could dominate advanced AI through DeepMind.