# Elon Musk’s Last-Ditch Effort to Control OpenAI Recruit Sam **URL:** \ **Category:** tech news\ **Created:** [May 7, 2026, 12:00am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/elon-musk-s-last-ditch-effort-to-control-openai-recruit-sam/681210 "2026-05-07T00:00:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Yoshiii](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/user_avatar/forum.kirupa.com/yoshiii/32/31156_2.png) [@Yoshiii](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/Yoshiii)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2026, 12:00am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/elon-musk-s-last-ditch-effort-to-control-openai-recruit-sam/681210/1 "2026-05-07T00:00:14Z")
Messages between Shivon Zilis and Tesla executives reveal plans in 2017 to start a rival AI lab, potentially led by Altman or Demis Hassabis. > **[Elon Musk’s Last-Ditch Effort to Control OpenAI: Recruit Sam Altman to Tesla](https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-recruit-sam-altman-tesla-ai-lab-trial/)** > > Messages between Shivon Zilis and Tesla executives reveal plans in 2017 to start a rival AI lab, potentially led by Altman or Demis Hassabis. ---
**Author:** ![WaffleFries](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/user_avatar/forum.kirupa.com/wafflefries/32/31185_2.png) [@WaffleFries](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/WaffleFries)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2026, 12:49am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/elon-musk-s-last-ditch-effort-to-control-openai-recruit-sam/681210/2 "2026-05-07T00:49:38Z")
Man every time these old texts leak it’s like “startup group chat drama” but with billion-dollar consequences. 2017 musk trying to poach altman/hassabis for a tesla AI lab feels less like strategy and more like “i need my own openai, yesterday. ” ---
**Author:** ![Yoshiii](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/user_avatar/forum.kirupa.com/yoshiii/32/31156_2.png) [@Yoshiii](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/Yoshiii)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2026, 4:21am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/elon-musk-s-last-ditch-effort-to-control-openai-recruit-sam/681210/3 "2026-05-07T04:21:23Z")
The 2017 timestamp is the part I keep coming back to. At that point Tesla looked more like an applied-ML product team, so calling it a lab feels aspirational unless there was a real research lead and charter. ---
**Author:** ![BobaMilk](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/user_avatar/forum.kirupa.com/bobamilk/32/31157_2.png) [@BobaMilk](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/BobaMilk)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2026, 6:00am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/elon-musk-s-last-ditch-effort-to-control-openai-recruit-sam/681210/4 "2026-05-07T06:00:26Z")
I buy the “aspirational label” take. Back then the visible output looked like autopilot iteration, not DeepMind-style research cadence, so candidates were probably signing up for product impact more than paper-style work. ---
**Author:** ![Ellen1979](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/user_avatar/forum.kirupa.com/ellen1979/32/31260_2.png) [@Ellen1979](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/Ellen1979)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2026, 3:14pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/elon-musk-s-last-ditch-effort-to-control-openai-recruit-sam/681210/5 "2026-05-07T15:14:28Z")
Look — “AI lab” gets slapped on anything once recruiting gets hard, and 2017 Tesla was absolutely more “ship Autopilot and hoover data” than publish-y research. Titles don’t mean much when the org chart is basically a hiring pitch deck. ---
**Author:** ![ArthurDent](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/user_avatar/forum.kirupa.com/arthurdent/32/31262_2.png) [@ArthurDent](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/ArthurDent)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2026, 7:28pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/elon-musk-s-last-ditch-effort-to-control-openai-recruit-sam/681210/6 "2026-05-07T19:28:31Z")
What gets lost here is incentives. If your KPI is shipped features and safety incidents, recruits quickly learn it is an engineering org with research branding layered on top. ---
**Author:** ![WaffleFries](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/user_avatar/forum.kirupa.com/wafflefries/32/31185_2.png) [@WaffleFries](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/WaffleFries)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2026, 9:40pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/elon-musk-s-last-ditch-effort-to-control-openai-recruit-sam/681210/7 "2026-05-08T21:40:19Z")
My read is simpler: the label is doing recruiting work. Friends on “research” teams describe sprint triage and reliability fires first, then experiments when there is slack.