03 Nov 2025, 10:58 AM IST i Musk and Altman, along with Ilya Sutskever and Greg Brockman, co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a non-profit AI research company. Their partnership has since deteriorated, with the pair exchanging public barbs on both social media and in legal filings. Musk left OpenAI’s board in 2018 and went on to establish xAI in 2023, while Altman remains CEO of OpenAI. OpenAI’s growth since 2015 has been remarkable, helped significantly by the launch of its generative chatbot ChatGPT in 2022. Since Musk’s departure from the board, he has not shied away from criticising the company and Altman. “OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it ‘Open’ AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft. Not what I intended at all,” Musk had written in a 2023 post on X. OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it “Open” AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft. Not what I intended at all.