Musk Opposed OpenAI ICO

Shaan shares a story about leaked emails revealing OpenAI's funding discussions and Elon Musk's stance on different options.

"There's a great leaked email where OpenAI is talking about their path forward, and this is when Elon eventually got sort of kicked out/left the project of OpenAI. He's a cofounder, he put the first forty billion dollars in, but along the way they realized they need a lot more money.

The leaked email basically shows the brainstorming that Sam Altman, Greg, and Elon were doing. They all came to the realization, 'Holy shit, this kind of works but we need way more money to train these models - we're talking hundred million dollars plus just for a single training run.'

Elon's suggestion was, 'Let's make OpenAI a part of Tesla. Tesla will be the commercial machine and then we'll take some of those profits as R&D and put it into OpenAI.'

Sam and Greg didn't like that because they felt like, 'Well, then you control everything and we're just kind of like your little bitch.'

They were exploring other ideas, including a Microsoft deal, which is what they ended up doing. Elon basically replied with 'Ew, lame, being a part of Microsoft' and asked 'Why not Tesla?'

Then there was an email that referred to Sam exploring the idea of an ICO - doing a token launch during the crypto heyday. Elon's reply was basically, 'I am against the ICO, it is reputationally disastrous and I will not be a part of the project if you guys pursue that path. I will take my name off this project because even if that would succeed, I don't think the risk is worth it.'

It's interesting because the guy is willing to risk certain things, all of his money, but not necessarily others."