Musk Greenlit $10B OpenAI ICO Before abrupt Pivot, Internal Notes Reveal

Elon Musk tentatively approved a $10 billion initial coin offering (ICO) for OpenAI in January 2018, according to internal correspondence released by the AI lab late Friday. The revelation, detailed in a post titled The Truth Elon Left Out, contradicts the Tesla CEO’s recent legal framing that he staunchly opposed OpenAI’s shift to a for-profit structure.

The “Scamworthy” Pivot That Almost Happened

Internal notes from mid-January 2018 show Musk congratulating OpenAI leadership on a fundraising strategy that included a massive token launch. The plan involved creating a for-profit subsidiary, a structure Musk now attacks in court, to issue the tokens. At the time, Musk reportedly told founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman that the ICO had “solved the long-term funding problem.”

The crypto integration was short-lived. By the end of January 2018, Musk withdrew support, claiming the organization was on a “path of certain failure relative to Google” and advocating for a merger with Tesla instead. When OpenAI leadership refused, Musk exited, cutting off funding.

In mid-January 2018, Elon congratulated us on a successful fundraise, agreed we should do an initial coin offering (“ICO”) to raise $10B… By the end of January, however, he told us he no longer supported the ICO.

Institutional Context

The disclosure undermines a core pillar of Musk’s ongoing lawsuit, which alleges OpenAI betrayed its non-profit mission by embracing commercial incentives. The $10 billion target, immense for 2018, suggests Musk was not only aware of but actively participating in aggressive capital formation strategies involving digital assets long before Microsoft’s $13 billion involvement.

Had the ICO proceeded, OpenAI would have likely become the largest protocol by market cap at launch, fundamentally altering the trajectory of the 2018 bear market. Instead, the entity pivoted to traditional equity financing, leading to the capped-profit model currently in place.