Elon Musk claims he’s the reason OpenAI exists

Elon Musk has never been known for modesty, but his latest comments about the world's hottest AI lab take things to a whole new level.

In an interview with CNBC on Tuesday, the Tesla boss claimed he is the reason that OpenAI exists, taking credit for everything from funding to the startup's actual name.

Naming rights, recruiting, and $50 million

Musk told CNBC's David Faber that he personally came up with the name OpenAI.

He also said he played an instrumental role in recruiting the key scientists and engineers who built the company's early foundation. Without his early involvement and network, he implied, the talent wouldn't have assembled in the first place.

Musk was an early backer who reportedly committed $1 billion before walking away amid disputes over how fast the company was moving. During the interview, he clarified that he ultimately invested somewhere around $50 million.

He also took another shot at Microsoft, asserting that the tech giant exerts control over OpenAI and questioning its capped-profit model. That is a claim Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has already firmly denied.

Alienating Larry Page and signing for the record

Musk also shared rare details about his fallout with Google co-founder Larry Page, whom he used to consider a close friend.

According to Musk, the two had lengthy debates about AI, with Page acting quite cavalier and seemingly indifferent to safety risks. The final straw came when Page allegedly called Musk a species-ist for prioritizing human consciousness over machine consciousness.

Safety remains Musk's official talking point, though his actions paint a more complicated picture. He signed the viral open letter in March urging a pause on training giant models, but admitted to Faber that he knew the letter wouldn't stop anything. He simply wanted his warning on the record.

Just one month after putting his name on that warning, Musk quietly incorporated his own rival startup, X.AI.

Why it matters

Musk's comments are less about nostalgia and more about framing the narrative for his own venture. By asserting founding father status at OpenAI while calling out its commercial pivot, he is trying to position X.AI as the rightful heir to the original, safety-first vision.

For builders and observers, this shows how personal the frontier AI race has become. Musk's strategy is undeniably clever for generating headlines and recruiting disgruntled researchers who feel OpenAI strayed too far into Microsoft's orbit.

At the same time, the hypocrisy is hard to ignore. Signing a six-month pause letter while filing paperwork for your own AI startup looks less like principled safety and more like a tactical attempt to slow down competitors while spooling up new GPU clusters.

We think the high-stakes mudslinging between Musk, Nadella, and OpenAI will only get louder. But historical credit doesn't ship products, and Musk will ultimately need working models from X.AI to prove his point.