Elon Musk, world renowned business magnate and CEO of Tesla, has had headlines trending since early 2018. Late in 2020, he claimed to have donated $100 million to ChatGPT developer, OpenAI, but reports later revealed that only around $15 million of donations could actually be traced back to him.
OpenAI is a non-profit software research company funded by Musk, Microsoft, and other investors. It focuses on creating advanced artificial intelligence (AI) frameworks and technology. Musk had wanted to take control of OpenAI in early 2018, but Sam Altman and the founders rejected him, prompting Musk to reduce his donations significantly from $100 million to $50 million.
Although OpenAI received some direct donations from the Musk Foundation, it is unknown as to how the company gained such a large market cap of $30 billion. This has raised questions about the legality of the situation and why all companies don’t choose to follow this route.
In 2016, Musk’s foundation donated $10 million to YC.org, which was founded by Altman and which, in turn, donated $10 million to OpenAI. That $10 million donation remains the only publicly declared cash contribution from Musk to OpenAI. YC.org gave OpenAI another $16 million in 2017, at least some of which is believed to have been from Musk. Finally, Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI.
Generally, the donations to OpenAI remain a mystery and its founders and the company alike have not come up with a straight answer to how it suddenly emerged to be a for-profit with such a large market cap. Musk’s lawyer, however, has not responded to inquiries as to the matter.
