Vinod Khosla slams Musk’s OpenAI case as ‘sour grapes’

Indian American billionaire Vinod Khosla has joined a war of words with Elon Musk for suing OpenAI saying it feels like a case of sour grapes because he did not get into the AI game early enough.

Musk, CEO and founder of electric vehicle (EV) car maker Tesla and private space technology major SpaceX, was OpenAI’s largest donor when it was still a non-profit. Khosla was the first venture capitalist to invest in the ChatGPT-creator when the company switched from a non-profit to a private enterprise in 2019.

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Musk is now suing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman over what he says is a betrayal of the ChatGPT maker’s founding aims of benefiting humanity rather than pursuing profits.

The lawsuit filed late on Thursday in California Superior Court in San Francisco is a culmination of Musk’s long-simmering opposition to the startup he co-founded.

OpenAI has since become the face of generative AI, partly due to billions of dollars in funding from Microsoft. Musk went on to found his own artificial intelligence startup, xAI, launched last July.

In a post shared Sunday, Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the founder of Khosla Ventures, slammed Musk over the lawsuit.

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“With Elon Musk, feels like a bit of sour grapes in suing OpenAI, not getting in early enough, not staying committed and now a rival effort. Like they say if you can’t innovate, litigate and that’s what we have here. Elon of old would would be building with us to hit the same goal,” he posted on X, the social media platform that Musk owns.

With @elonmusk , feels like a bit of sour grapes in suing @OpenAI , not getting in early enough, not staying committed and now a rival effort. Like they say if you can't innovate, litigate and that's what we have here. Elon of old would would be building with us to hit the same…

— Vinod Khosla (@vkhosla) March 2, 2024

“We have known @sama since the early days of @OpenAI and fully support him and the company. These lawsuits are a massive distraction from the goals of getting to AGI and its benefits. Yet, even with all these hurdles, especially given this week, Sam, Greg and team have pushed out better products faster than anyone in AI,” he wrote in another post

“For all the baseless accusations being made about @OpenAI, we were the first venture check in and were never felt misled by Sam or the company,” Khosla wrote in a third post.Musk responded to Khosla with a terse comment, “Vinod doesn’t know what he is talking about here.”

X users were also eager to point out that Musk was one of the earliest investors in OpenAI, so Khosla’s argument about him “not getting in early enough” did not hold water.

“Didn’t he provide the first $100m?” asked one commenter. “Not getting in early enough?! He was a founder!” another wrote.

Musk’s lawsuit alleges a breach of contract, saying Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman originally approached him to make an open-source, non-profit company, but the startup established in 2015 is now focused on making money.