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LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, who was an early investor in OpenAI, called out Elon Musk for his attempts to prevent OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit company.
Musk’s push to stop that status change comes “while he’s accelerating his own efforts” to build out xAI, his company that competes with OpenAI and operates as a for-profit entity, Hoffman said at Semafor’s World Economy Summit, adding that Musk has a “complete lack of credibility.”
The Tesla CEO filed a lawsuit against OpenAI last year claiming breach of contract over the company’s original mission to benefit humanity.
OpenAI is “still going for its mission, and a public benefit corp. is a good way to do that,” said Hoffman, who recently cofounded AI drug discovery startup Manas AI. That business structure “allows a board of directors to make decisions for the mission — against profit, against revenue.”
Not only should OpenAI transition to a for-profit structure, Hoffman said, but “it is actually, in fact, them pursuing their mission.”
Hoffman and Musk, both part of the “PayPal mafia,” have an adversarial history that includes Musk accusing Hoffman last month of funding protests against Tesla. “The probability is 100% that Reid is funding them,” he wrote on X.
Hoffman responded: “The probability many, many people don’t like you? 100%.”
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Earlier this week, a group of former OpenAI employees and law experts submitted a letter to the attorneys general of California and Delaware opposing the company’s structure change.
“OpenAI is trying to build AGI, but building AGI is not its mission,” the letter reads.
The Semafor View
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