The recent trial pitting Elon Musk against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman unequivocally highlighted a critical consensus between the two billionaires: the development of advanced artificial intelligence demands not only significant resources but also colossal financial investment. While the current AI-obsessed stock market fuels a global construction boom of chipmaking factories and energy-intensive data centers to power chatbots, testimony and evidence from the trial revealed that key figures in the AI industry were privately debating these immense costs nearly a decade ago. In a 2018 email to Altman and other OpenAI co-founders, Musk expressed his growing concern about the futility of competing with Google, stating, “Even raising several hundred million won’t be enough. This needs billions per year immediately or forget it.”

These soaring financial requirements significantly influenced the trajectory of OpenAI, which commenced in 2015 as a nonprofit organization committed to developing AI for the common good. Today, it has transformed into a capitalistic enterprise, now valued at an astonishing $852 billion. As OpenAI and other AI companies in San Francisco prepare for potentially historic Wall Street debuts, the trial also brought to the forefront crucial questions regarding whether commercial interests alone will dictate the future direction of AI. Karan Girotra, a professor of operations, technology, and innovation at Cornell Tech, noted that while it is possible to build major initiatives with nonprofit funding, the early years of OpenAI were characterized by uncertainty around AI, making it a risky investment. However, he emphasized that investment in AI is no longer speculative. “Now it’s traditional investment in something we know works,” Girotra explained, drawing an analogy to building a factory ahead of demand for a popular product.

In his lawsuit, Musk accused OpenAI of abandoning its charitable mission in favor of building AI for profit, alleging that Altman and fellow co-founder Greg Brockman acted behind his back and unjustly enriched themselves. OpenAI, in response, contended that Musk had supported plans to establish a for-profit entity and filed his 2024 lawsuit primarily to undermine the success of the ChatGPT maker as he simultaneously developed his own AI company, xAI.

The federal jury in Oakland, California, ultimately did not rule on the merits of the case. Instead, it dismissed Musk’s lawsuit after a three-week trial, determining that it had missed a statutory deadline. Nevertheless, the trial meticulously documented internal power struggles that foreshadowed current societal and political debates concerning the profound impacts and staggering costs of artificial intelligence. Kevin Scott, Microsoft’s chief technology officer and a defendant in the lawsuit, testified about his company’s decision to invest billions in OpenAI’s technology after founding donor Musk resigned from OpenAI’s board in 2018. Scott explained to jurors the prevailing skepticism at the time, stating, “It was before ChatGPT. It was before these remarkable things that are happening right now and so most of the people at Microsoft were very skeptical about whether or not all of these claims were going to materialize into reality.” Microsoft, then seeking to challenge Google in AI research, learned from OpenAI that what they needed most were more data and vastly superior computing resources to significantly enhance their AI systems. Scott elaborated, “The things that they wanted and ultimately that we helped them do were very capital-intensive projects like building giant data centers, full of very expensive computers and networks.”

While it remains a point of contention how much profit was the primary driver for OpenAI’s transition to a capitalistic model—a venture that is not yet profitable but is likely heading towards an initial public offering later this year—what is undeniably clear is how the enormous costs involved constrained the company’s strategic options. More than five years before the public debut of ChatGPT, OpenAI achieved a significant breakthrough by training an AI system to defeat professional players of Dota 2, a complex multiplayer video game featuring mythical creatures. Altman testified about this milestone, saying, “Honestly, the world reacted to it somewhat less than I thought they should have, but to us internally, it really felt like a moment where we had shown that our technology, using something called reinforcement learning, could take on an enormously complex task.” OpenAI’s livestreamed victory against a top Dota 2 player at a Seattle competition in 2017 elevated the tiny nonprofit to a major contender against Google, which was then considered the leader in AI research. This success also prompted introspection about how OpenAI, largely dependent on Musk and other donors, could truly compete as a nonprofit.

Altman recalled Musk’s reaction to the Dota victory: “He was impressed. And then immediately after the Dota win, Mr. Musk said he thought we really need to get more serious and figure out how to get way more capital.” For Ilya Sutskever, another co-founder and OpenAI’s former chief scientist, the Dota victory sparked discussions about the necessity of creating a for-profit company to more easily raise the required funds. Sutskever informed jurors, “The realization is that to make progress in AI, you need a big computer. And you need the big computer because the brain is a big computer. You have a hundred billion neurons and a hundred trillion synapses in the brain.” This pivotal moment was followed by a battle of wills, with Altman and Musk vying for leadership of OpenAI. Musk subsequently attempted to integrate the AI laboratory into his car company, Tesla, but other OpenAI leaders resisted, ultimately leading to Musk’s departure.

AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay contributed to this story.