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- Reid Hoffman called Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI a case of “sour grapes.”
- Hoffman, an early investor in OpenAI, made the comments on a recent episode of the All-In podcast.
- Hoffman, who cofounded LinkedIn, stepped down from OpenAI’s board in March 2023.
Reid Hoffman has called Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI a case of “sour grapes.”
The “PayPal Mafia” member weighed in on Musk’s decision to sue OpenAI on a recent episode of the All-In podcast.
He said: “I’m not very charitable about those lawsuits. I would like to be because Elon is one of the entrepreneurial heroes of our time and generation, but I think the most charitable thing to say is sour grapes.”
The LinkedIn cofounder also claimed on the podcast, which aired Friday, that OpenAI chief Sam Altman offered Musk the chance to participate in and lead the startup’s investment round but chose not to.
Hoffman was a founding investor in OpenAI and joined its board in 2018. He then announced he was voluntarily stepping down as an OpenAI director in March 2023 to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest as he was cofounding Inflection AI.
Hoffman said he invested $10 million of his own money through his foundation in OpenAI but, like Musk, didn’t get any shares in the company.
He added that he could “understand the emotion” if Musk felt he had been screwed, but that the billionaire’s $44 million investment was made at a time when OpenAI was a non-profit.
“It’s not like Elon is short of money,” Hoffman said.
Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and cofounders Altman and Greg Brockman in March, accusing the company of jeopardizing its nonprofit mission by partnering with Microsoft.
OpenAI fired back by calling Musk’s claims “incoherent” and “contradictory.” It later published emails between OpenAI executives and Musk on a blog in a bid to dismiss them.
Musk then dropped his lawsuit in June — just a day before a judge was set to consider the case’s future during a hearing — but brought a fresh lawsuit against OpenAI, Altman, and Brockman in August. Lawyers for Musk argued in the filing that the cofounders “manipulated” him by playing on his concerns about AI safety.
Musk left OpenAI in 2018 and set up xAI last year.
Representatives for Hoffman and Musk didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.
