The Humiliation Behind Closed Doors
Elon Musk has long styled himself as the aggrieved father of OpenAI, the one who saw the AGI light and then got pushed out by the profiteers. But newly surfaced testimony from his ongoing legal dogfight with Sam Altman paints a far more pathetic picture. Musk told former OpenAI president Greg Brockman that he tried to recruit Bill Gates as a donor not once, not twice, but four separate times. Gates never even showed up. Not a meeting. Not a tour. Just silence. For a man whose ego requires constant maintenance, that level of dismissal must sting like a paper cut from a billion dollar check.
The Ugly Payback Theory
So why did Gates ghost? Musk’s answer is characteristically petty. He suggested that his own relentless public trash talking of Gates over the years might have soured the billionaire on contributing. This is vintage Musk: he burns bridges with insults, then acts surprised when no one crosses back. The irony is thick. Musk spends years mocking Gates as a pandemic profiteer and a vaccine zealot, then expects Gates to bankroll his AI ambitions. The OpenAI saga was never just about ethics or safety. It was always about control, credit, and the inability of two massive egos to share a stage. Gates staying away may have been the smartest investment he never made.
Source: Theverge
