Elon Musk threatened to make OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Greg Brockman ‘the most hated men in America’

Elon Musk threatened to make OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Greg Brockman “the most hated men in America” after they rebuffed the billionaire’s overtures for eleventh-hour settlement talks in his case against the AI lab.

Musk sent a text to Brockman, OpenAI’s president, on April 25, during the weekend before the trial began last Monday, to “gauge interest in settlement”, according to a filing by OpenAI’s lawyers in the case being heard in federal court in Oakland, California.

After Brockman suggested each side drop its claims, according to the filing, Musk replied by text: “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 direct exchange between two of the central figures in the trial, which entered its second week on Monday, underscores the personal enmity between the former associates who co-founded OpenAI before becoming rivals.

Musk’s lawyers have yet to respond to the filing. On Monday, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers denied OpenAI’s request to question Brockman about the message when he takes the stand.

She criticised the start-up’s lawyers for trying to introduce it through a “backdoor” and said they should have asked Musk about the message when he appeared last week.

Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI seeks to unwind the $852bn start-up’s transition from a non-profit into a for-profit company and oust co-founders Altman and Brockman.

The world’s richest man claims OpenAI sold out its charitable mission after he donated money to help launch the AI lab. If he prevails, OpenAI’s ambitions for a trillion-dollar initial public offering this year could be derailed.

Microsoft — which owns a 27 per cent stake worth $135bn — is also accused of “aiding and abetting” the start-up’s conduct. The defendants deny all claims.

Last week, Musk repeatedly accused Altman and Brockman of conspiring to “steal a charity” that he co-founded in 2015 with “bait and switch” tactics.

OpenAI countered by showing emails from September 2017 about creating a for-profit entity to help raise more funds to pay for recruitment and computing power. Musk would have owned 55 per cent of the equity, while Altman, Brockman and another co-founder, Ilya Sutskever, were to receive 7.5 per cent.

When his colleagues opposed the structure, Musk became frustrated and pulled his monthly donations, sending an email that read: “Guys I’ve had enough . . . Either go do something on your own or continue with OpenAI as a non-profit.”

OpenAI’s lawyers also pointed to Musk starting his own private, for-profit AI company, xAI, to compete with them. They alleged that his lawsuit was filed mainly to slow down and tarnish a rival.

Brockman is expected to face questions on Monday about the meaning of several potentially embarrassing excerpts from his personal journal that were uncovered during pre-trial discovery.

“[I] can’t see us turning this into a for-profit without a nasty fight,” one entry read. “[Musk’s] story will correctly be that we weren’t honest with him in the end about still wanting to do for profit just without him.”

“This is the only chance we have to get out from Elon,” Brockman wrote in another entry. “Making the money for us sounds great and all” and “Financially, what will take me to $1bn?”

In testimony last week, Musk talked down OpenAI, saying its fierce rival Anthropic was “number one” in AI at the moment. He also admitted that xAI had “distilled” ChatGPT to help improve its own chatbot, Grok, which performs worse on model leader boards and generates comparatively little revenue.