Musk vs OpenAI: The Billion-Dollar War Behind the Future of AI

On May 18th, a jury of nine at the Federal Court in Oakland, California, reached a unanimous and stunning decision, dismissing all of Musk's lawsuits against OpenAI. Musk lost completely. At that moment, the whole world was raising a glass and celebrating for OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman. Everyone thought that the battle over the original sin of this trillion dollar empire had finally come to an end, and that Altman had ascended to the pinnacle of AI. But no one expected that this was only the first step in Musk's script. Just a few dozen hours after the verdict was delivered, Musk immediately countered by releasing the IPO prospectus for SpaceX. Only then did people realize that the courtroom dispute was merely a smokescreen set by Musk. Not only would he push the recently victorious OpenAI into the abyss, but he was also launching the ultimate siege, a campaign valued at two trillion dollars, one that could very well upend the entire existing landscape of AI for humanity. Today, in 20 minutes, I'll help you see through the most dramatic and most misunderstood power struggle between brothers in Silicon Valley history. We'll cover the ins and outs of this lawsuit, the sensational behind-the-scenes revelations as the parties tore into each other, and the deadly move Musk has hidden in the prospectus. How will it launch a devastating, dimension-reducing attack on the world's AI giants? Trust me, you have to watch until the end. You'll be shocked beyond belief. The story begins in 2015. That year, Musk and Altman were not enemies, but comrades fighting side by side. What bound them tightly together was the same nightmare, Google. At that time, Google spent a fortune to acquire the top AI team, DeepMind, keeping the world's best engineers firmly in its grasp. Musk was extremely anxious. He felt that Google's founder Larry Page didn't care at all about AI safety. If things continued this way, Google would eventually create a terminator that could destroy humanity. So he approached Sam Altman, who was then the head of the YC Incubator, and the two hit it off immediately. Since Google wanted to monopolise, we would establish a non-profit lab to develop artificial general intelligence that benefits all of humanity, and we would also open source it unconditionally to the entire world, truly making it open to counter Google's monopoly. Musk named this company OpenAI. At that time, he put in real money, investing more than $40 million in total, while Altman and another genius, Greg Brockman, were responsible for leading the team and getting things done. At that time, these three were full of passion, believing themselves to be dragon slayers destined to save the world. But none of them could have imagined that the name OpenAI would one day become the biggest irony in all Silicon Valley. By 2017, the bottomless pit of large models began to devour funds at a frantic pace. Relying solely on ideals and donations, this battle simply couldn't go on. Since they needed to attract investment, they had to restructure the company's organisation. At this point, Musk demonstrated his iron-fisted approach as an entrepreneur. He agreed to the restructuring, but only on the condition that he would take more than half of the shares, become CEO, and have absolute control. He even had a backup plan in mind. According to court documents disclosed this time, in September 2017, Musk quietly registered a new company in private called OpenAI Technology Company, which is a legally profit-making business entity. But what he never expected was that this backup plan would become a boomerang and come back to hurt him. In that same month, an email landed in the inboxes of Musk and Altman with a subject line containing just two words, honest thoughts. The person who wrote the letter was Brockman, the president of OpenAI and one of its three founders. He used lofty language to tell Musk that artificial intelligence would shake the very structure of society and that they bore a responsibility to all of humanity. Such power, he said, must never be placed under the absolute control of any single individual. To put it plainly, Musk, do you want to call all the shots yourself? No way! We are upholding the moral bottom line here. What's even more subtle is that while Brockman was joining forces with Altman in the letter to reject Musk, he was secretly telling others that, in fact, they couldn't fully trust Altman either. Friends, think carefully about this scene. Brockman is stirring the pot. At this point, the three core founders each had their own hidden agendas. Musk's response was just four words, I've had enough. After that, he cut off the funding. At this point, this idealistic ship that was built to take on Google had already developed a crack under the collision of money and power, but the real split was yet to come. At the beginning of 2018, Google was racing far ahead while OpenAI was running out of resources in the rear. Musk grew increasingly anxious and in January he wrote a blunt email to Altman saying that, compared to Google, OpenAI was heading down a path doomed to fail. He said that drastic action had to be taken immediately or else, aside from Google, everyone else would become irrelevant. Musk offered a solution, merge OpenAI into Tesla, arguing that Tesla had money, resources and could support this costly battle. Of course, once merged, who would be in charge? The answer was obvious. Altman and Brockman did not agree. A month later, Musk laid all his cards on the table and told Altman, I respect your abilities, but I am extremely dissatisfied with the way this company is managed. Either let me significantly increase my investment and hand over control to me, or my involvement drops to zero and we draw a clear line between us. The partners still refused to give in, so Musk left, resigned from the board and gave the public reason that Tesla was also working on AI, which created a conflict of interest. Musk thought, without my money, you bunch of fools won't last a year. What happened next directly led to this lawsuit. In 2019, in order to survive, Altman pulled off a bold move. He set up a profit-limited commercial subsidiary under the non-profit parent company, then transferred all the technology, patents and talent that Musk had invested money, effort and people to develop into this profit-making subsidiary and promptly embraced Microsoft's investment of over $10 billion. Then at the end of 2022, as we all know, they launched ChatGPT, which shocked the world. Musk was stunned. He had just left and right after, they became the brightest star in Silicon Valley. Watching OpenAI's valuation soar, eventually heading straight for $850 billion or even the trillion dollar mark, and seeing it become increasingly closed off and more and more like Microsoft's money-making machine, Musk finally couldn't take it anymore. In 2024, Musk officially sued OpenAI and Sam Altman. He wasn't after a settlement. He wanted the court to remove Altman from his position as CEO, to break up this profitable commercial company and to force this multi-billion dollar piece of fat back into its original place as a non-profit charitable organisation. Their core argument is, back then I supported you because you were doing charity to save humanity. I was both compassionate and contributed money and people. But now you've locked up the technology to make money for Microsoft. Isn't this stealing a charitable organisation? OpenAI's counter argument is, stop pretending to be so innocent. Back then, you wanted to be the boss but didn't succeed. And you even tried to privatise the company. Now you're suing us purely because you later started a competing company, XAI. You're just jealous of us and want to take us down through a lawsuit. After hearing this, friends, which side do you think has the stronger case? Leave a comment and tell me. If you support Musk, type Musk. If you support OpenAI, type Altman. I think a lot of you might feel that, hmm, Musk is in the right, isn't he? But you have to understand this is Silicon Valley, a business battlefield where interests come first. And in court, if you try to expose someone else's secrets, yours will get exposed too. This lawsuit lasted a full three weeks and before the trial even began, over 100 internal documents were unsealed. Text messages, emails, even personal diaries were all thrown under the spotlight. The most powerful people in Silicon Valley were completely exposed in court. Let's first look at OpenAI's embarrassment. Brockman, the one who wrote to Musk, insisted in court that he only cared about the mission of saving humanity and didn't care about money. But Musk's lawyers got hold of his personal diary, which recorded that in the early days of the startup, Altman and he secretly arranged benefits and distributed shares behind Musk's back. Altman used shares from his own family and venture capital companies to secretly buy off Brockman and early employees. Not only did they sideline Musk, but from the very beginning, they were trying to extract personal gain from this charitable organization. Altman posed as Silicon Valley's godfather, a flawless chosen one. However, court records show those around him distrust him. The CTO called his management a mess. The company's scientists wrote a 52-page document accusing him. Also, in 2023, when he was kicked out of the board, he begged not to be removed, acting as humble as a beggar. But the board completely ignored him. As for Musk, he's not exactly clean either. During cross-examination, OpenAI's lawyer asked Musk, did your own AI company, XAI, secretly distill OpenAI's model to create grok? So-called distillation, simply put, means feeding your own AI with a model that someone else has already trained. In other words, it's like copying homework that others spent tens of billions to complete. This act violates OpenAI's terms of use. At the time, Musk tried to dodge the question, saying that this is something everyone in the industry does. The lawyer pressed further. So you mean yes, right? Musk paused for a moment and then said, I guess so. And that's not all. Court documents also revealed that back in the day, Musk and Zuckerberg once texted each In short, after three weeks, neither side managed to claim the moral high ground. So how would the jury rule? How can you prove whether Altman betrayed his original intentions? The result was completely unexpected. The jury didn't even consider that question at all. On the morning of the 18th, the jury spent less than two hours to reach a surprisingly unanimous verdict. Musk lost completely. Why was that? It was because his lawsuit was filed too late. The court held that OpenAI's shift toward commercialization and its acceptance of Microsoft's investment happened between 2017 and 2019, and Musk was fully aware of it at the time. According to California law, the statute of limitations for this kind of case is three years, but Musk waited until 2024 to file the lawsuit. To put it plainly, he sued too late. After all that suing, both sides ended up exposing everything in court, leaving nothing to the imagination. It was pure entertainment for us onlookers. The court and the jury didn't even look at the evidence. Musk was furious and immediately lashed out on X, saying the judge and jury didn't dare face the facts and were just hiding behind technicalities about the calendar. Altman and Brockman made their fortune by stealing from a charity, and now the only question is, on which day did they do it? Then, with just two words, they said, This Silicon Valley drama, filled with 30 billion dollars in dividends, confidential memos and moral posturing, ended with a complete victory for Altman. But this is far from the end. It's just the beginning of a decisive showdown. Just hours after the court delivered its verdict and the world mocked Musk, he unexpectedly dropped a nuclear bomb, SpaceX's IPO Prospectus. Just look at the timing and you'll know this was no coincidence. On May 18th, the jury ruled against Musk. But at that very moment, SpaceX had already quietly submitted its IPO filing to the regulators. Just two days after the verdict, news that SpaceX would go public on June 12th had already spread throughout Wall Street. He had just lost completely in court and the very next moment he put the largest IPO in human history on the table. So in that courtroom battle, what Musk really wanted was just to pin Altman to the pillar of moral disgrace and then stage another courtroom drama that would capture the world's attention. When the smoke screen was up, it distracted people from looking up at the sky. So this masterstroke was hidden in SpaceX's Prospectus. Yesterday, this Prospectus revealed a lot of major information. In February of this year, Musk completed a massive acquisition that broke global records. His rocket company, SpaceX, swallowed up his other AI company, XAI, in an all-stock deal, merging the two into one. What does this mean? Now, SpaceX is no longer just an aerospace company. It is also a top-tier AI company. After the merger, the valuation of this behemoth soared directly to $1.25 trillion, instantly becoming the most valuable private company in the world. So why did Musk want to tie AI together with rockets and satellites? These are two completely unrelated businesses. What he wants to do is something big. He wants to solve the two biggest headaches facing all AI companies on Earth today, electricity and cooling issues. Here, in order to accommodate as many viewers as possible, we need to explain the principles behind this. If you've listened this far, please give me a like. To new friends, welcome to subscribe to True Perspective. Let's continue. Today's AI, whether it's ChatGPT or Grok, are both complete money burners and power-hungry beasts. How so? For AI to become smarter, it requires thousands upon thousands of graphics cards running calculations day and night. At this point, all the world's tech giants ultimately face two physical limits here on Earth. The first is the need for electricity. Computation consumes an incredibly terrifying amount of power, and now the world's power grids are almost being drained dry by AI. The second is cooling. Graphics cards generate an extreme amount of heat, so they must constantly be cooled with air conditioning and large-scale water cooling systems. Otherwise, the machines will burn out. In the recently released SpaceX prospectus, Musk proposed a revolutionary idea. Orbital data centers. What exactly are these? How do we explain this? Musk plans to use Starlink, that is, Starship's carrying capacity, to send tens of thousands of specially modified Starlink satellites into space. These satellites will not only be used to transmit satellite internet, each one is itself an AI server floating in space. On January 30th of this year, SpaceX officially submitted an application to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to launch up to one million solar-powered satellites into space. Once in space, the issues of electricity and heat dissipation are actually resolved. Why is that? Because in space, there is no atmosphere and no clouds to block the sunlight. The solar panels on the satellites can continuously and efficiently generate electricity from the most intense sunlight 24 hours a day, without relying on Earth's power grid anymore. In this way, the problem of electricity is solved. As for the issue of heat dissipation, space is a vacuum and extremely cold, so these AI servers floating in space can dissipate heat through radiation, directly releasing the heat from the graphics cards into the universe. The billions of dollars spent on air conditioning systems and the massive amounts of water consumed on Earth are completely unnecessary in space. Musk did the math at this year's Davos Forum. With solar energy and the extreme cold of space, running AI in space will become unbelievably cheap. So, do you understand now? This is Musk's space trinity. Starship for transporting equipment, Starlink for building the network, and letting AI in space use solar energy for free, with Grok serving as a super brain in the depths of the universe. Three things, no electricity bills, no water bills, and no need for government environmental approvals. Musk has shattered the physical ceiling of Earth-based AI right outside the atmosphere. If you look at Altman, you'll realize this is what a true dimensionality reduction strike looks like. Altman has had a tough year, taking a hard road on the ground, traveling all over the world, lobbying Middle Eastern tycoons, Japanese conglomerates, and the US government, trying to raise trillions of dollars. What does he need so much money for? He wants to build massive physical data centers on Earth and invest in ground-based nuclear power plants to supply energy for AI. But Musk has completely bypassed the limitations of Earth's resources and environmental standards, simply launching AI servers into space with rockets made by his own company. That's why I say Musk is using an unimaginably sci-fi approach to launch a high altitude encirclement and assault on the AI giants on Earth. This unprecedented $1.75 trillion IPO of SpaceX may appear to be about becoming the top aerospace stock. But if you look at the clever move of bundling XAI and Grok into it, you'll realize this isn't about raising funds for aerospace at all. It's Musk raising a record-breaking $75 billion in space military funds from the global capital markets for his space-based AI empire. This move by Musk is a direct blow to OpenAI's lifeline. The Wall Street Journal broke major news overnight. OpenAI has now urgently teamed up with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, preparing to secretly go public as early as this Friday, aiming to beat the competition to an IPO before September this year. So the drama between Musk and OpenAI is far from over. Now, this battle over who goes public first and who drains Wall Street's liquidity has reached a fever pitch. So up to now, do you still think Musk has lost? What do you all think about this game? In your eyes, is Musk's space encirclement strategy a genius move that will revolutionize humanity's future? Or is it just a sci-fi daydream fueled by a billionaire burning money? If you think this move has potential, type 1 for me. If you think it's just a castle in the air built by the rich, type 2. Let's see what everyone thinks. Speaking of which, I have to say, with both Musk and Altman heading for IPOs in the second half of this year, it already marks that AI has officially moved from the laboratory era into the stage of an imperial arms race. AI has long since left the stage where scientists in ivory towers spark inspiration. It has become a global capital-driven super wave that is changing national power and human civilization. This is the starting point of a new era. But will this new era lead humanity to uncontrolled prosperity or to a future that even its creators cannot foresee? It reminds me of something Musk once said in court. The future we are heading toward is not one where artificial intelligence serves humanity, but one where humans ultimately become pets of artificial intelligence. Friends, what do you think about this surging wave of AI? Leave me a comment and let me know. All right, let's wrap up our discussion here for today. This really is some truly shocking information, especially when you understand the grand strategy Musk is playing. If you have any thoughts, friends, leave a comment and share them with me. Finally, if you enjoy my program, please don't forget to give me a like. To new friends, welcome to subscribe to True Perspective and feel free to share my program with your friends. This way, every interaction from you helps trigger YouTube's recommendation algorithm, allowing my videos to reach a wider audience. So let me thank you all in advance right here. All right, thank you all for watching. We'll see each other again on Saturday here at True Perspective. Don't miss it. Bye. Bye.