Sam Altman says Elon Musk’s mind games were damaging OpenAI
Sam Altman and Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 with the kind of idealism that ages badly once lawyers get involved. The nonprofit structure was the whole point — a declared quarantine against the profit motives that, the founders argued, would eventually corrupt any serious attempt at building safe artificial general intelligence. Musk left the board in 2018. His explanations shifted with the audience: a Tesla conflict of interest here, a strategic disagreement there, a request for operational control the board wouldn't give him. What followed was years of escalating friction conducted mostly in public, through tweets, lawsuits, and the occasional cryptic jab. Now Altman has put a name to what was happening behind closed doors. In comments reported by The Verge on May 12th, he described Musk's behaviour during his time on the board as psychological — deliberate, corrosive, and damaging to the organisation's ability to function. Mind games. The kind of phrase that's precise enough to sting and vague enough to survive a deposition.
If confirmed, here is what this means. The framing matters enormously. "Mind games" isn't a legal claim, but it is a characterisation that resets the public narrative around who bears responsibility for the dysfunction that plagued OpenAI's early years. Altman is, in effect, arguing that the instability wasn't structural or ideological — it was personal, and it had a source. That has consequences for how Musk's subsequent attacks on OpenAI are read: not as principled whistleblowing from a concerned co-founder, but as a continuation of a pattern that started while he still held a seat at the table. It also adds weight to OpenAI's defence in the ongoing legal battles Musk has initiated. And for the wider AI industry, it raises an uncomfortable question about how much of the chaos surrounding the world's most consequential AI lab was one man's appetite for dominance dressed up as ethics.
Watch for any corroborating accounts from former OpenAI board members or early staff who might confirm the texture of Musk's conduct during those years — and for Musk's response, which will either deny the specifics or, characteristically, escalate them.
In the second week of the landmark trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI, Musk’s motivations for bringing the suit were under scrutiny. Last week, Musk took the stand, alleging that
<!-- SC_OFF --><div class="md"><p>"<em>Look, I don’t like bullies, and I think Elon’s a bully. And so I think once in a while you got to punch a bully back in the
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<!-- SC_OFF --><div class="md"><p>18-month investigation by Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz, based on never-before-disclosed internal memos, 200+ pages of a co-founder’s private
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Musk texted OpenAI's president and co-founder saying that he and CEO Sam Altman "will be the most hated men in America."
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