Court filings show Musk tried to hire Altman for Tesla AI lab
emails and testimony from the musk v. altman trial revealed that elon musk tried to recruit sam altman to a tesla ai lab months before leaving openai's board in 2018. musk offered altman a tesla board seat and proposed a b corp subsidiary to absorb openai. evidence also showed musk recruited andrej karpathy from openai to tesla.
New evidence presented in federal court Wednesday details Elon Musk's efforts to recruit Sam Altman to a 'world-class AI lab' at Tesla before his departure from OpenAI's board in 2018. Emails and testimony from Shivon Zilis, a conduit between Musk and Altman, showed Musk offered Altman a Tesla board seat and proposed a B Corp subsidiary to absorb OpenAI. OpenAI lawyers argued this proves Musk sought to 'corrupt OpenAI' and merge it with Tesla after failing to assume control. Additionally, introduced texts indicated Musk recruited former OpenAI researcher Andrej Karpathy to Tesla, with Zilis texting colleagues that OpenAI president Greg Brockman was unaware of the recruitment.