Musk lost to OpenAI. But that doesn't mean OpenAI comes out looking clean. A court in California ruled: Elon Musk came too late. His lawsuit against OpenAI, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and Microsoft failed on the statute of limitations. Legally, a win for OpenAI. But over the course of the trial, a lot more came out. Accusations that Altman wasn't trusted inside OpenAI. Brockman's diaries about money and the mission. Ilya Sutskever's testimony. The role of Microsoft. And the biggest question of all: who should actually control the artificial intelligence that was promised to be built for all people?
OpenAI started out as a non-profit, a non-commercial organization, broadly speaking, for humanity. Now it's a company the market talks about as a potential AI empire, with a valuation that's actually no longer approaching trillions of dollars, but in the trillions of dollars. I think it'll be worth more than ten trillion, yes. Musk says they stole the charity, that is, the charitable mission. OpenAI answers: without the money and Microsoft there would be no ChatGPT, and Musk himself wanted to be in control, he himself wanted to have control.
In this episode we'll break down, without any fanaticism, right, where Musk is right and where OpenAI is right. Why did Altman win the case but take a reputational hit? And why is Microsoft the quiet winner? What does this mean for business, for the developer market, and for everyone who'll be working with AI tomorrow? And the main question at the end. If AI was built for humanity, why isn't humanity at the table where control is being divided up?
So, where do we start? With the fact that the court shut Musk down on the time limit. Yes. And I'll go into a lot of detail now, but it didn't close the main question of the whole AI era, the era of artificial intelligence. Can a technology originally created for humanity be run like a trillion-dollar corporation? And now we're going to talk about how OpenAI was actually created. And it's an important aspect to know what's really going on in the artificial intelligence market and who's actually playing in that market. Let me remind you that there are four leading companies in America.
That's Google Gemini, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Musk's company xAI. And they're all incredibly interconnected. I mean, it's as if it's all one single whole in terms of how everything got created, right. So, from Musk's side. The jury decided the lawsuit was filed too late, and that doesn't prove, of course, that all the moral claims against OpenAI have disappeared. And OpenAI, it won. But of course it's a very serious reputational risk, because testimony surfaced in court about distrust of Altman, and conflicts of interest, and internal chaos.
And for investors the story is clear: the path to an IPO got easier, in terms of an OpenAI IPO, because Anthropic, by the way, is also heading for an IPO and it seems to be planned earlier than OpenAI's, but OpenAI too. Although they say Sam Altman has big conflicts with their CFO. But for society right now, of course, the question is who will actually control the future of artificial intelligence. We'll talk about that now. What was going on, what was going on inside there in general. And about Microsoft. Why do I say it's the quiet winner?
Because, well, first of all, OpenAI without Microsoft apparently wouldn't have scaled much in the first place. And although Microsoft is doing something that looks like a corporate takeover of the infrastructure, and there's been a lot, an awful lot of discussion about that. Although I'd say that right now it looks, OpenAI looks like a fairly independent company, yes. Now I'll show you who actually created OpenAI, so you can make sense of this story and find your way in it. That busts the myth, on the one hand, that it's Musk's company or that it's Altman's company. And how the company came about in the first place.
So, we once filmed an episode together with Max Grigoriev, one of the first special episodes we did with him, or the very first. And there we talked about the missions of companies in the world of artificial intelligence, within Silicon Valley, and the US in general. And he stated very clearly, laid out his points. It's very important to hear that OpenAI, it sort of came out of Google. Because Google is a corporate environment, and so, to create a company that does open artificial intelligence, on the one hand.
On the other hand, that's how it came about, that's what it was created for, and the Google people, so to speak, came out of there. And then Anthropic split off from OpenAI, and those people came out of there. And xAI, if you also look at it from the side. I mean, xAI is originally, it's Elon Musk's story. And of course Elon Musk, like no one else, took part in creating OpenAI. And it's said, there's a very interesting point, that Sam's, I mean Elon Musk's, view changed very dramatically after he met with Sergey Brin.
He's one of Google's main owners. When he said that developing artificial intelligence mattered more to him than humanity and than people. On that topic, by the way, as I promised, we'll still study it separately. So, 2015. Look, eleven years have already gone by. OpenAI is announced as a non-profit, as a non-commercial organization. And it clearly said it was a non-profit research organization whose goal is to advance digital intelligence for the benefit of all humanity. Who were the key roles there, the key people, right? There was Ilya Sutskever. He's the research director. Greg Brockman as CTO, as chief technology officer.
And Sam Altman and Elon Musk as, sort of, co-founders. So, in 2017 came the realization that in order to build AGI, and we often use these terms, AGI, ASI, they're just terms. I mean, in order to build some kind of next-level artificial intelligence. Back then, by the way, today's artificial intelligence at today's level didn't exist yet, right. It takes billions of dollars. And OpenAI later claimed that already in 2017 it became clear that building AGI, artificial general intelligence, requires enormous compute and capital.
So, 2017-18. Elon Musk put a lot of money into it, but the people put in their resources, and their time, and money, and contacts. Clearly there was a kind of joint, joint effort going on, but at that time Elon Musk, first of all, wasn't the figure he is now. That's also important to understand. He was, after all, a more modest figure. It's now that Elon Musk, well, first of all, Elon Musk is the richest person on Earth, and he's very firmly among the leaders. And secondly, over the last ten years, since 2015, Elon Musk has proven very clearly that he knows how to create incredibly cool products. Back then that wasn't there yet.
So, 2017-18. The dispute over control, right, that happened, and according to OpenAI's version Musk wanted a majority stake, control of the board of directors and the role of CEO of the commercial entity, which is, in fact, what he does in all his projects. At Tesla, at SpaceX, everywhere. I mean, that's how he, how he operates as a person, and at xAI too. And OpenAI says it couldn't hand absolute control to one person. In 2018, Musk leaves. According to OpenAI's version, the negotiations over the commercial structure didn't work out, and Musk left. So, 2019, a for-profit arm is created, that is, a division for profit.
It's a sort of commercial structure, a for-profit structure with capped returns for investors, in order to attract capital and talent. 2022, 2023. ChatGPT becomes a mass product. And you, of course, are most likely watching this episode because you yourselves are starting to know what ChatGPT is. And even then, of course, this episode is interesting, well, to advanced people, to pretty highly advanced people. Clearly humanity will keep developing in terms of... the fact that right now there are a billion users of artificial intelligence, or, in total, worldwide they say a billion and a half.
Clearly, the people who, well, seriously understand these systems, there are tens of millions of them, no more right now, or maybe even just a million. And people who properly understand it, a million at most. So, ChatGPT, 2022, 2023, an API for developers appears. The whole world starts to know what it is. Those tens of millions of users start coming in. November 2023, the Altman crisis happens. OpenAI's board of directors fired Altman. That's a separate big topic. In 2025, in October, a new structure is set up, where they now clearly state that, first, Microsoft has 27 percent, former employees and investors 47 percent.
So, the important thing is who's actually saying what, to understand what the conflict was. Because you might be wondering what the conflict was about. So, Elon Musk, his position. OpenAI was created as a mission for humanity, and then it was turned into a commercial structure. He talks, and this is important, right, about the charitable idea and the charitable mission. The strong side: OpenAI really has changed radically since 2015. And the weak side. OpenAI shows that Musk himself discussed a commercial structure, wanted control, and now he owns a competing AI ecosystem, xAI. Once again.
To much of the Russian-speaking community it seems like xAI is some kind of nonsense. Elon Musk is a space cadet. xAI occupies, plays an incredible role in the US, and it's a very serious organization, yes, a very serious organization. OpenAI's position: without the commercial structure, Microsoft, compute, investors, there would be no ChatGPT. The strong side: modern AI requires enormous resources. We all know that. Many countries and companies still don't get that. And a lot of businesspeople very often tell me: "Oh, they'll build the same thing in our country. For example, in Russia they'll build the same thing.
Or in Europe they'll build the same thing." They won't, right? The resources, the money that's being invested in the US and being invested in China, nobody today can afford that, right? OpenAI's weak side. When stakes worth tens of billions appear around the mission, the audience asks: is this still for humanity? And the stakes really are appearing. An interesting position. I'd like to recall Anthropic, which recently said that its shares being sold on the secondary market have no significance whatsoever.
I mean, the market is really being stirred up right now, because it's huge money, yes, the biggest money in the world. I mean, right now in artificial intelligence and infrastructure, in terms of the money being discussed at all, it's the biggest money in the world, the biggest opportunity in the world, right? The biggest opportunity in the world, yes. By the way, you're on the ToTheMoon channel. This is tech news, insights from Silicon Valley, around the world. We're coming out at different times now.
We have a really cool podcast episode on Sunday. Be sure to subscribe to the channel and share your comments. And we have a cool, unique audience in the Russian-speaking space when it comes to AI and artificial intelligence. We always break everything down, take a look, make new episodes and so on. Sam Altman's position: the mission wasn't betrayed, it was scaled. Musk, in his version, wanted control. The strong side. Indeed, under Altman OpenAI became the world's main AI product. And even when they tried to remove him, it still became that under him.
Although there are questions about his technical knowledge and everything else, still, yes, he's a very serious entrepreneur. The weak side is that the trial dragged out former colleagues' complaints about his honesty and management style. Greg Brockman's position, right. The team put in years of work after Musk left, and OpenAI couldn't be handed over to the control of one person. And there's logic in that, because, after all, given what people say about the structure of Elon Musk's management systems.
His office is five minutes from me, across from my kids' school in Stanford, and I don't know him personally, I haven't met him, but there are a lot of people who are right there around him. And he has a pretty tough, serious management style. Tough in what sense? In that he decides himself what to do, right. If today it's one decision, tomorrow it's another. And he wants to be in control. That's his right, that's his choice. And he's a cool, strong person. Greg Brockman. The strong position, really, is that he's one of the key builders of OpenAI.
He was one and he remains one. If you don't know this person, we talk about him from time to time on our channel. You can look him up in various places. Greg Brockman's weak side is his stake. And the diaries make the story about the mission less honest. His stake is estimated at tens of billions of dollars. Microsoft. Position. We didn't hijack the mission, we paid for the infrastructure and took on a huge risk. That really is how it was. And Microsoft made a very serious bet on it.
And they really did invest. Although I think Microsoft is now losing very badly in the race in artificial intelligence, and software, and everything. And we've put out one episode about that, and a second one has maybe come out or will. I think this Macrohard that Elon Musk talks about, his project that exists, it really, all of AI in general undermines Microsoft going forward. For me Microsoft, I have more than twenty years of experience with Microsoft, but still, yes. But they were cool to have invested in OpenAI.
And the strong position is what they say: that, for example, without Azure, that's their in-house product, and capital, and capital, OpenAI couldn't have scaled. The weak position. It's Microsoft specifically that heightens the fear that the infrastructure is becoming dependent on a few corporations. Yes. But then again, we know there's Google, it has Gemini, which depends on Google. Anthropic, after all, is starting to be dependent on a few people, although they seem to look fairly neutral. But it's not all that simple there. xAI depends on Elon Musk.
No need to ask a fortune teller on that one. Basically the main turning point right now, of course, is the matter that, of course, right now it's a question of greed, yes, of greed, of computing, of compute, of infrastructure.
I mean, everything that's been happening, it's all about that. And it's a telling moment. A telling moment, of course, for how the courts work, a telling moment for all the hierarchies. And it's important to understand that the US, after all, is a heterogeneous structure in terms of the corporations that run things, the people who run them, the politicians, the whole economy of big corporations. And right now there are mixed attitudes toward the people who own the industry like that. A very interesting topic, a very interesting topic. Musk lost the case but continues the public war.
His line isn't legal technicalities, it's more of a moral accusation. He's accusing everyone on moral grounds. I think legally, too, there'll be endless lawsuits there. Someone in our comments, by the way, wrote that if AI learns to make software, there'll be corporations suing AI. That'll probably happen too. Altman won as CEO, but he had to publicly prove a basic thing: that he can be trusted. And of course Altman's reputation is badly damaged. You can see that within Silicon Valley. But I can say from my own experience, from my own life, that people love money and people love power.
And whoever has power and money, they turn a blind eye to reputation. By the way, the problems with Altman weren't only in Musk's head, they were discussed inside OpenAI. Various people who came in on the inside show that, including Mira Murati. And there were various diaries. It's very interesting, yes. And Microsoft, of course, looked at it from the start as a business. Which is normal. Absolutely. I always say: "Well, look at what's really going on." An important point is that, after all, the OpenAI of 2015 and of 2026 are absolutely different corporations, different organizations, different products that they put out.
And if we're talking about society, that's how it goes in the world. Whatever anyone says, there's a big plus: after all, fewer conflicts, more good products, and a focus on good products. And I'm all for great products developing. And these four great products, for them to move forward, the world's big ones. The big ones: Gemini, Anthropic, OpenAI and ChatGPT, yes. And that's Google Gemini, as I said at the beginning, and xAI. The risk that exists from society's point of view. Of course, society definitely has no voice in the control over AGI.
And it's becoming clear that we're already seeing many models being closed off from ordinary people, and I think they'll belong more and more, and more, to particular groups of people and particular groups of individuals. Because even I right now can't set aside compute separately, say, ten, twenty thousand dollars, for example, to throw in there to solve some task of my own. I don't have that, that kind of resource to do it with the latest tools. And clearly there's a very serious redivision of the market ahead, and absolutely new players who'll be in it.
What do I want to say now? That the most honest formula there is, of course, so that you all understand, is that Musk lost not because, first of all, this is important to keep in mind, because there's a lot being written online. Not because the court decided that OpenAI is morally impeccable. He lost because the court and the jury decided that legally he came too late. Very interesting, of course. OpenAI won because, in parallel, it was still able to prove that this story had been visible for a long time. This commercial turn had been discussed for a long time.
Without capital it's impossible to build cutting-edge artificial intelligence, real cutting-edge artificial intelligence. But the trial showed something interesting: that Musk has his own AI empire and a fight for control. And he is, of course, fighting for his own control in terms of xAI. I'd only loosely call that a fight for humanity. Altman, of course, is definitely in a very serious fight for his own control. If you reread all the things people say, I mean, that he shouldn't be allowed to press the button. Maybe those are outside opinions.
Again, I haven't discussed this with Altman personally, I don't know him. Altman has, although I know a lot of people around him. Altman has questions of trust, of course, of personal investments. Of what's going on in general. And there are questions about Brockman too, right? Because you can see he's a dark horse. On the one hand he's the CTO, on the other hand he has his own very personal interest. And you can see, from his testimony in court and looking at his diaries, and looking at all the discussions, that he's a much darker horse than Sam Altman and Elon Musk.
Microsoft has power, yes, they have infrastructure power. Once again, I think they're losing it very badly, and society has almost no place in the decision-making. So the main question isn't who's the good guy, the main question is: if AGI really becomes the world's new infrastructure, who should run it? A foundation, a corporation, Microsoft, the founders, the investors, the government, or all of us, ordinary people? Be sure to share in the comments, subscribe to the channel and hit like. See you in the upcoming episodes.