Sam Altman's 2022 Letter: OpenAI Considered Open Source to Choke Off Competitors

In 2026, a letter from Sam Altman to OpenAI's board of directors, dated October 1, 2022, became public in the Musk v. Altman trial. In it, the company's chief proposed quickly releasing an open GPT-3-class language model to make it harder for competitors both to launch their own models and to raise money.

What Sam Altman Proposed

In his October 1, 2022 letter to the board, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, described a plan to build a language model "at roughly the GPT-3 level" that could run locally on consumer hardware, and to release it openly. According to Altman, the company had held "extensive discussions of open source strategy" and planned to return to the topic at the next board meeting.

The letter's main motive was not openness or the mission, but timing and competition. Altman wanted to release the model "soon, before Stability or someone else does" — in other words, to beat Stability AI, the company known for the open release of Stable Diffusion that same year.

• Date of the letter: October 1, 2022
• Author: Sam Altman; recipient: OpenAI's board of directors
• Plan: an open GPT-3-class model running locally on consumer hardware
• Urgency: release before Stability AI and other players
• Disclosed: in 2026, as part of the Musk v. Altman case

Why OpenAI Wanted an Open Model

OpenAI wanted an open model as a weapon against competitors, not as a gift to the community — this follows directly from the text of the letter. Altman wrote that publishing such a model "discourages others from releasing equally powerful models and makes it harder to fund new projects."

The logic is commercial, not altruistic. If a free GPT-3-class model is already publicly available, it is harder for investors to justify backing a startup building the same thing, and harder for rival labs to justify their own release. Openness becomes a barrier to entry for newcomers.

"Overall, we think this discourages others from releasing equally powerful models and makes it harder to fund new projects," —

Sam Altman, from a letter to OpenAI's board of directors, October 1, 2022.

Why It Matters

The letter matters because it diverges from OpenAI's public rhetoric about openness for the benefit of humanity. Inside the company, as the 2022 document shows, open source was discussed as a tool of competitive pressure, not as a value in itself.

The context amplifies the effect: the letter surfaced in Elon Musk's lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI, where the dispute centers on the company's departure from its original nonprofit and open mission. Against that backdrop, the very name OpenAI reads differently.

For the industry, this is an early example of a major lab planning to use an "open" release not to grow an ecosystem but to suppress competition. Years later, open-weight models have become a market norm, but the motive in the 2022 letter — control over who should enter the market at all — remains a useful lens for reading corporate statements.

What This Means

The disclosed correspondence shows that "openness" in OpenAI's early strategy was largely a tactic in the fight against competitors, not an end in itself. It is worth keeping in mind when evaluating any AI lab's statements about its motives: a public mission and internal calculations can diverge sharply.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did Sam Altman propose in the 2022 letter?

To release an open language model at roughly the GPT-3 level, able to run locally on consumer hardware, and to do it quickly — before Stability AI and other players.

In what case did the letter surface?

The October 1, 2022 letter became public in 2026 in the Musk v. Altman trial — Elon Musk's lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI.