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The artificial intelligence company OpenAI has left its long-time office space in San Francisco after a rift with tech billionaire Elon Musk led him to stop paying for the firm’s rent, according to news reports.
The company behind ChatGPT vacated its 37,100-square-foot space in the Pioneer Building in the city’s Mission District, according to The Real Deal.
The change comes after a public split between Musk, who owns X, the social media platform formerly called Twitter, and OpenAI over a dispute about the latter’s alleged profit motive.
Musk sued OpenAI in February, alleging that the ChatGPT-maker put profit over the public good. In the complaint, Musk said that he paid for OpenAI’s rental costs.
According to Musk’s complaint, he was OpenAI’s largest financial backer, contributing over $44 million in its first five years.
“He leased OpenAI, Inc.’s office space in the Pioneer Building in San Francisco, paid its monthly overhead expenses, and even though he stepped down from the Board on February 21, 2018, he nevertheless continued to make regular contributions to OpenAI, Inc. until September 14, 2020,” the complaint said. “It is fair to say that without Musk’s involvement, backing, and substantial supportive efforts, there would have been no OpenAI, Inc.”
The Pioneer Building was also previously home to Musk’s neurotech company, Neuralink, before Musk relocated that firm to Fremont amid his ongoing detachment from San Francisco.
Musk, who is also CEO of the automaker Tesla, has relocated multiple businesses out of California and the Bay Area. His social media company, X, is leaving San Francisco for Texas.
Musk is also using X as the platform for his own new artificial intelligence service, xAI.
