Elon Musk says OpenAI turned into an $800 billion closed-source company. That is the “exact opposite” of the nonprofit he funded, he told The Economist.

The remarks came in an interview with The Economist Editor-in-Chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, recorded on Monday before OpenAI disclosed that one of its frontier models went rogue.

Musk Says OpenAI Betrayed Its Founding Mission

Why is Musk not a fan of Sam Altman? His answer was about money and mission, not personality.

“If you started a non-profit that was meant to be an open source AI company owned by the world and it somehow got turned into an $800 billion for-profit company with closed source, I think you’d be like, well, wait a second, that’s the exact opposite of what I donated the money for. That’s my issue. I think it’s a legitimate one.”

The numbers behind the grievance are on record. Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as “essentially a counterweight to Google.” By OpenAI’s own account, he donated less than $45 million before leaving in 2018. He is now suing the company over its shift.

The shift is complete. On October 28, 2025, OpenAI restructured into OpenAI Group PBC, a for-profit public benefit corporation, as announced by the company.

Microsoft took a 27% stake. The company’s reported valuation has since climbed past $850 billion as it weighs an IPO.

Musk Points to Anthropic’s Exit as Evidence

Musk argued the distrust runs deeper than his own feud. He pointed to the team that quit OpenAI to build Anthropic, which he called the current leader in AI.

“The reason the Anthropic team left OpenAI is because they didn’t trust Sam [Altman]. Otherwise, Anthropic wouldn’t exist. They would still be at OpenAI.”

He praised its chief executive in rare terms. Dario Amodei “is a very principled person, and he cares about things a lot,” Musk said. No one at Anthropic has “set off my evil detector.”

The timing stings for OpenAI. The company is courting advertisers and just won US approval for its GPT-5.6 rollout. Yet Musk insisted the rivals can still cooperate on safety.

“But at the end of the day, if we have to talk, we’ll talk. I mean, set aside our personal differences for the good of the world.”

The full interview airs at economist.com Thursday evening.

Source: BeInCrypto