OpenAI was initially funded with money from Elon Musk as a not-for-profit.
This is commonly said on the basis of his $1b pledge, but AFAICT Musk wound up contributing little or nothing before he resigned ~2018. If you look at the OA Form 990s, Musk is never listed as a donor, only a board member; the only entities that are listed as contributing money or loans are Sam Altman, Y Combinator Research, and OpenAI LP.
This is commonly said on the basis of his $1b pledge
Wasn’t it supposed to be a total of $1b pledged, from a variety of sources, including Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel, rather than $1b just from Musk?
EDIT: yes, it was.
Sam, Greg, Elon, Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Infosys, and YC Research are donating to support OpenAI. In total, these funders have committed $1 billion, although we expect to only spend a tiny fraction of this in the next few years.
He’s definitely given some money, and I don’t think the 990 absence means much. From here:
in 2016, the IRS was still processing OpenAI’s non-profit status, making it impossible for the organization to receive charitable donations. Instead, the Musk Foundation gave $10m to another young charity, YC.org. [...] The Musk Foundation’s grant accounted for the majority of YC.org’s revenue, and almost all of its own funding, when it passed along $10m to OpenAI later that year.
Also, when he quit in 2018, OpenAI wrote “Elon Musk will depart the OpenAI Board but will continue to donate and advise the organization”. The same blog post lists multiple other donors than Sam Altman, so donating to OpenAI without showing up on the 990s must be the default, for some reason.
That’s interesting. I did see YC listed as a major funding source, but given Sam Altman’s listed loans/donations, I assumed, because YC has little or nothing to do with Musk, that YC’s interest was Altman, Paul Graham, or just YC collectively. I hadn’t seen anything at all about YC being used as a cutout for Musk. So assuming the Guardian didn’t screw up its understanding of the finances there completely (the media is constantly making mistakes in reporting on finances and charities in particular, but this seems pretty detailed and specific and hard to get wrong), I agree that that confirms Musk did donate money to get OA started and it was a meaningful sum.
But it still does not seem that Musk donated the majority or even plurality of OA donations, much less the $1b constantly quoted (or any large fraction of the $1b collective pledge, per ESRogs).
This is commonly said on the basis of his $1b pledge, but AFAICT Musk wound up contributing little or nothing before he resigned ~2018. If you look at the OA Form 990s, Musk is never listed as a donor, only a board member; the only entities that are listed as contributing money or loans are Sam Altman, Y Combinator Research, and OpenAI LP.
Wasn’t it supposed to be a total of $1b pledged, from a variety of sources, including Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel, rather than $1b just from Musk?
EDIT: yes, it was.
https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai/
He’s definitely given some money, and I don’t think the 990 absence means much. From here:
Also, when he quit in 2018, OpenAI wrote “Elon Musk will depart the OpenAI Board but will continue to donate and advise the organization”. The same blog post lists multiple other donors than Sam Altman, so donating to OpenAI without showing up on the 990s must be the default, for some reason.
That’s interesting. I did see YC listed as a major funding source, but given Sam Altman’s listed loans/donations, I assumed, because YC has little or nothing to do with Musk, that YC’s interest was Altman, Paul Graham, or just YC collectively. I hadn’t seen anything at all about YC being used as a cutout for Musk. So assuming the Guardian didn’t screw up its understanding of the finances there completely (the media is constantly making mistakes in reporting on finances and charities in particular, but this seems pretty detailed and specific and hard to get wrong), I agree that that confirms Musk did donate money to get OA started and it was a meaningful sum.
But it still does not seem that Musk donated the majority or even plurality of OA donations, much less the $1b constantly quoted (or any large fraction of the $1b collective pledge, per ESRogs).
Possible that he funded OpenAI LP? Or was that only created later, and funded by Microsoft and other non-founding investors?