Musk-OpenAI Lawsuit Exhibit 45: Brockman's "Flip to For-Profit" Note

The Musk-OpenAI lawsuit is still in its early innings, but one of the exhibits filed alongside it contains a quote that goes directly to the heart of the case. Exhibit 45, an internal note, captures OpenAI's thinking back in 2018.

Brockman's "our plan" note

Exhibit 45 contains a Greg Brockman note headed "our plan." Two lines stand out:

"it would be nice to be making the billions"

"we've been thinking that maybe we should flip to a for-profit."

The same document also shows the team acknowledging that converting the non-profit structure to a for-profit one without Musk would be "morally bankrupt." They proceeded anyway.

Timeline context

2015 — OpenAI is founded as an open-source non-profit AI lab. Elon Musk is among the founding co-chairs.
February 2018 — Musk leaves the board.
2018 — Brockman's "our plan" note is written (the subject of Ex. 45).
2019 — OpenAI LP, the capped-profit subsidiary, is created.
2023+ — ChatGPT explosion, Microsoft partnership, multi-billion-dollar valuations.
2026 — Musk's lawsuit reaches its first hearing.

Why this exhibit matters for the case

Musk's core legal argument is: "OpenAI drifted from its founding mission, turned into a for-profit company, and violated the founding agreement."

Ex. 45 gives his legal team a written record of intent — a line from OpenAI's own internal correspondence that frames the structural pivot in financial terms. A ruling won't turn on a single document, but how Exhibit 45 is read may become one of the more decisive arguments in the case's later stages.

The broader question

Can a non-profit transition to a for-profit without breaching its founding agreement? Or is "taking what donors funded and folding it into a company" automatically a form of trust violation?

What's your take — are Brockman's lines written evidence of broken intent, or just an unavoidable step to keep the lab running at the time?