Emails and testimony reveal Elon Musk's 2017 attempt to recruit Sam Altman for a Tesla AI lab
Shivon Zilis acted as a conduit for the recruitment effort, which ultimately failed before Musk stepped down from OpenAI's board in February 2018.
Emails and video depositions presented to a federal jury on Wednesday during the Musk v. Altman trial have illuminated a significant chapter in the rivalry between Tesla and OpenAI. The evidence shows that in late 2017 and early 2018, Elon Musk actively planned to recruit OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to lead a rival artificial intelligence unit within Tesla. Musk went as far as offering Altman a seat on the Tesla board to entice him to join what was described as a world-class laboratory designed to compete with Google DeepMind and Facebook AI Research.
Shivon Zilis, a former OpenAI adviser and current Tesla executive, played a central role in facilitating these plans. Acting as a key conduit between Musk and Altman, Zilis drafted FAQs for a planned NeurIPS event and discussed various scenarios to bring either Altman or DeepMind's Demis Hassabis to Tesla. A draft FAQ from November 2017, shared by Zilis, explicitly listed Altman's name next to Musk's with question marks, indicating he was a potential leader for the proposed Tesla AI lab.
Although Altman never joined Tesla and the specific lab plans were abandoned, the evidence supports Musk's claim that he attempted to subvert OpenAI before stepping down from its board in February 2018. OpenAI lawyer William Savitt stated outside the courthouse that Musk had contemplated seeking to join Altman to the board as part of an effort to corrupt OpenAI and absorb it into Tesla. The goal was to get Altman to abandon the nonprofit's mission and become part of Tesla's commercial AI strategy.
Testimony from Zilis further detailed the extent of the recruitment drive. In text messages from February 2018, she shared scenarios suggesting Altman run a Tesla AI lab or that Demis Hassabis be recruited to Tesla. Zilis testified that she resigned from the OpenAI board after learning of Musk's efforts, citing that having the father of her children start a competitive effort made her position untenable. She told a friend that when the father of one's babies starts a competitive effort and recruits out of OpenAI, there is nothing to be done.
Contradictory testimony also emerged regarding Andrej Karpathy, a former OpenAI researcher. Zilis indicated she knew Karpathy was leaving OpenAI for Tesla before his departure, whereas Musk previously testified that Karpathy left voluntarily. In text messages from June 2017, Zilis responded enthusiastically to news that Karpathy had signed an official offer, noting that OpenAI leadership seemed unaware of the move. This discrepancy highlights the friction between the two camps during the recruitment period.
Despite the detailed planning, the initiative did not materialise. Zilis confirmed during her cross-examination that Altman never ended up joining Tesla and that the AI lab and the associated NeurIPS launch event never came to fruition. The documents and depositions presented on Wednesday provide a clear picture of Musk's strategic intentions prior to his departure from the OpenAI board, underscoring the depth of the conflict that has defined the AI sector for years.
