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Agora Energy Technologies just won the 2021 Keeling Curve Prize for Capture & Utilization, sharing it with another firm this year. Earlier this year, it won first prize in the Hello Tomorrow global deeptech competition against 5,000 entrants from 128 countries. Agora’s technology is revolutionary, and the awards are well deserved. They picked up the Asian Alibaba Entrepreneur Fund Award in 2020, and the CEO, Christina Gyenge, PhD, is one of three 2021 Fellows in the Cartier Women’s Initiative science and technology global competition as well. As a result, they’ve been talking to global technology firms, and Canadian trade ambassadors for France and Hong Kong among others.

So, what is their award-winning technology, and what’s so great about it? For those interested in the deep electrochemistry, I recommend reading their peer-reviewed paper on their approach, The carbon dioxide redox flow battery: Bifunctional CO2 reduction/formate oxidation electrocatalysis on binary and ternary catalysts published May 31st, 2021 in the Journal of Power Sources (Impact factor: a very respectable 8.87 in 2021), but otherwise, here’s the low down.

Agora’s technology is a redox flow battery. That tech has been around for a while. NASA was working on them in the 1970s. The first one was stood up at the University of New South Wales, Australia in 1984, using the metal vanadium as a core component of its electrolyte. Commercial variants started appearing in the past decade, all using metals as the basis of their electrolytes. Bill Gates has invested in an iron-based one via Breakthrough, and it’s one of the few of his investments in climate solutions I consider to be a decent choice.

Where do redox flow batteries fit? I have an opinion, having gone deep on energy storage over the past few years, including a series on closed-loop, pumped storage hydro and looking at lithium-ion battery futures with a PhD student of Stanford’s Mark Z. Jacobson, as well as talking with Professor Jacobson directly about storage. In my opinion, lithium-ion in its various incarnations will deal with a lot of 4-8 hour demand management and ancillary grid balancing requirements, including some duck-curve issues. Redox flow batteries will compete a bit for same day storage, depending on the technology, and extend out for 1-3 days or even longer up to several weeks. Closed-loop, pumped hydro storage will mostly take over after 2-3 days and extend out to 2-3 week storage. A lot less storage is required than many people assert, but still a great deal of storage is required, and the solutions will overlap. In other words, redox flow batteries will be a big part of a big market.

Lithium-ion batteries are limited to short-term storage because their energy and power attributes scale in lockstep. The more MWh a lithium-ion battery can store, by definition the more MW it supplies. There are some hacks you can do with that, but effectively you get to a point where you don’t need that many MW at a time, so lithium-ion is unwieldy in the system. Great for demand management with the likely 20 TWh of lithium ion batteries in electric vehicles in the US alone by 2050 by my estimation, but that won’t help much for next day or next week storage.

Redox flow batteries dodge this. They use big tanks of chemicals separate from the bits that transform one type of chemical into another, storing the energy, or transforming it back or into something else, releasing the energy. That separates the power and energy attributes of the battery. You can scale up the MWh storage of the battery as much as you want, while maintaining the same MW of electricity capacity. They share that benefit with closed-loop, pumped storage hydro, but without the necessity to put 30-foot diameter tunnels through miles of rock.

Think of it like a car engine and a gas tank. The gas tank is the energy store, and determines how long you can drive for. The engine provides the horsepower, which says how much work you can do. Energy is MWh. Horsepower is MW. Lithium-ion batteries put both in a single package, and to get more energy, you have to add lots of both energy and power, meaning you end up with too much power a lot of the time. But redox flow batteries separate the gas tank and the engine, just like in car. That means you can get as much energy as you need, with only as much power as you need. And because they are stationary, you can make the gas tank as big as you want.

Not All Redox Flow Batteries Are Created Equal

Most of the technologies were patented decades ago. Except for Agora’s, they all use metals, often toxic ones, and usually expensive ones. They have weaknesses in terms of energy density or durability. The metals used for electrolytes and the semi-precious metals used for catalysts make them capital intensive. Many of the technologies have unsolved challenges. They are batteries, and that’s all they are. Many are good, but aren’t amazing. And they are comparatively expensive.

Then there’s Agora’s solution. First, the team.

The co-founders are Christina Gyenge and Elod Gyenge, both PhDs. Christina is CEO and in addition to her chemical engineering PhD has done post-doctoral work at Stanford and multi-disciplinary work across biology and biological systems chemical and energy engineering. Elod is the President of the company and CSO as well as a professor of chemical engineering at UBC. He is a leader in electrochemical engineering research and has been recognized with numerous international awards and honors. Elod has extensive industrial experience and has collaborated with Ballard and Fortune 500 companies on chemical engineering around fuel cells and related technologies. The Director of R&D at Agora is Dr. Pooya Hosseini-Benhangi. Pooya obtained his PhD at UBC in Elod’s group and has also spent time applying electrochemistry to gold mineral processing as a post-doctoral fellow. The core redox flow battery innovations are protected by patents in various stages of finalization in 52 countries, with the Israeli patent just awarded. Several electrochemical and chemical engineers round out the mix.

Christina and Elod started working in this space in 2012. They have three primary innovations that are unique as far as I am aware. 

The first is that they are using gaseous CO2 in the charging phase in a hybrid gas-liquid redox flow battery. Reversing it in the closed-loop model produces CO2 again, unpacking the energy. A major advantage of this is that CO2 and the other chemicals are cheap, non-toxic and common, unlike the metal-based electrolytes of vanadium and other metal-based redox batteries. As with many fields, paradigms are hard to dig out of, and batteries being metal-based is one of those tough paradigms. The closed-loop battery model doesn’t consume the CO2, but CO2 is very cheap by the ton, $30-$100, making the economics of this approach better than metal-based batteries, where the metals often cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per ton. Their work on CO2 gas diffusion exchange is cutting edge, well ahead of most others, and a massive technical differentiator as well as a strong value add.

The second deep insight is their catalyst. It’s a core part of their intellectual capital that they are protecting for a simple reason. The catalyst is a cheap and common substance, overcoming a different challenge for many other flow batteries and fuel cells, which typically use semi-precious metals such as platinum, which typically range from $30 – $60 per gram. While little of the precious metals is used per cell, when you start multiplying by thousands of cells, it starts to add up quickly.

But the biggest one in my opinion is the open-loop model. A closed-loop model transforms the CO2 from one chemistry to another, and then back. In the open-loop model when the energy is extracted, the CO2-based chemicals are transformed to carbonates or bicarbonates.

Why is that important? Well, there are a few reasons. The first is that carbonates and bicarbonates are big business. My assessment sees a $44 billion annual market for the chemicals that Agora’s tech can produce from waste CO2 and clean electricity. The second is that this displaces the Solvay process. I’ve looked at that industrial process, just as I’ve looked at cement production, and Agora’s approach is so much cleaner it’s painful. The Solvay process produces a net 2.74 tons of CO2 per tons of bicarbonates produced in the 1870s chemical process involving ammonia, heating with natural gas, and cooling in different steps. Every box of baking soda you’ve ever bought comes with an invisible 3 boxes of CO2 by mass, in other words. More on this in the next article.

In Agora’s process, lower-cost renewably generated electricity flows in at night or other times of day when it happens to be cheap, the process runs at room temperature, and no ammonia is involved. You could put Agora’s tech in a light-industrial building downtown and no one would notice. The third is that it consumes waste CO2, instead of producing a lot of CO2 as the Solvay process does. This is one of the few carbon usage models that makes fiscal and technical sense, and fits as an industrial component of the future. I know, I’ve spent a lot of time assessing carbon capture and industrial processes’ CO2 footprints.

Lazard unsubsidized levelized cost of storage with Agora's technology annotated

Lazard unsubsidized levelized cost of storage with Agora’s technology annotated

But it’s the combination that’s key. It’s a battery. Shove renewable electricity into it, and get clean electricity back. Lots of tech does that. However, Agora’s tech has excellent energy density, and great durability too. It can store a lot of electricity for the mass and cycle it a lot of times. Using CO2 instead of metals makes it a lot cheaper. And their catalyst being cheap due to the chemistry makes it even cheaper. 

Relative ROI for different battery technologies

Relative ROI for different battery technologies by author

Those basic factors make it cheaper than most other forms of storage automatically. Cheaper to build. Cheaper to operate. Lower cost storage. Agora has done four fiscal case studies with LafargeHolcim for the technology applied to wind energy grid balancing and an integrated low-carbon cement plant of the future, so the numbers have been scrubbed backward and forward. 

And the kicker is the carbonate and bicarbonate production. It consumes waste CO2. It produces useful chemicals. Bicarbonates are in lots of things. Food. Toothpaste. Antacids. And they are worth from $200 – $600 per ton, depending on the chemistry and the purity. Imagine a battery that lasts a long time, eats CO2, and produces useful industrial chemicals. It’s a trifecta. 

Chart of relative carbon neutrality of different battery technologies chart

Chart of relative carbon neutrality of different battery technologies chart by author

These battery technology comparison charts are early and indicative, not late, based on rock solid numbers, or seriously reviewed. I pulled them together based on discussions, but they haven’t been validated. My gut tells me that they are close to right in terms of scale, but there’s more work to do on them. And more variants of these assessments to produce. No wonder Hello Tomorrow, the Keeling Curve Prize Team and the Cartier’s Womens Initiative picked Agora. I saw this 20 months ago. The Agora team saw this close to a decade ago.

Their solution isn’t a thornless bed of roses, of course. 

The CO2 is transformed into an acid on the way through the process into the storage medium, so that requires care in handling. The set of chemicals include bromine variants. While bromine is an essential trace element in human biology, as with dihydrogen monoxide too much is lethal. The toxicity of the bromine is a concern that must be managed. Other alternatives are less efficient.

Technology readiness levels

Technology readiness levels courtesy NASA

They are at lab efficiency levels right now. While projections indicate that they will get over 80% in terms of round-trip storage, this hasn’t been demonstrated. They are at the MVP stage or technology level four, and need to build a scaled prototype. That’s going to take 2-3 years, and another few million dollars.

They aren’t a manufacturing and distribution firm or a chemical commodity firm, but a technical innovation firm. They need a global manufacturing partner and a chemical commodity partner. Firms like that have been knocking on their door a lot in the past couple of years, and a lot more with the various prizes this year.

Agora’s CO2-based redox flow batteries will be a core technology assisting us to bend the Keeling Curve back down. Hello Tomorrow indeed.

Full disclosure. I have a professional relationship with Agora as a strategic advisor and Board observer. I did an initial strategy session with Agora about their redox flow battery technology in late 2019 and was blown away by what they had in hand, and my formal role with the firm started at the beginning of 2021. I commit to being as objective and honest as always, but be aware of my affiliation.

 

 
 

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Rad Power gives RadRover 6 Plus e-bike an extra battery at $1,399, Exclusive renewed Anker SOLIX F3800 at $1,999, EcoFlow, more

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April 10, 2025

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Rad Power gives RadRover 6 Plus e-bike an extra battery at ,399, Exclusive renewed Anker SOLIX F3800 at ,999, EcoFlow, more

Headlining today’s Green Deals is Rad Power’s newly launched Earth Day Sale with up to $699 in savings on a solid lineup of e-bikes, including returning accessory bundles on its latest models. One notable – and popular – standout is the brand’s RadRover 6 Plus Step-Thru Fat Tire e-bike that comes along with an extra battery for double the travel time at $1,399. We’ve also secured an exclusive $680 off deal on the refurbished Anker SOLIX F3800 Portable Power Station that is down at $1,999. Lastly, we’ve got the latest flash offers from EcoFlow’s ongoing Easter Sale and Mega Sale for the rest of the day, which include a bundle for the DELTA 2 Portable Power Station with a waterproof bag for $449, as well as two DELTA Pro Ultra Extra Batteries down at $4,599. Plus, all the other hangover Green Deals are in the links at the bottom of the page, like yesterday’s new low price on the Heybike ALPHA e-bike, and more.

Head below for other New Green Deals we’ve found today and, of course, Electrek’s best EV buying and leasing deals. Also, check out the new Electrek Tesla Shop for the best deals on Tesla accessories.

Rad Power is launching an Earth Day Sale through April 23 with up to $699 in savings on a selection of e-bikes, including the ongoing RadRunner lows we’ve been seeing repeat over the last few events since February. The headliner for this sale though is the popular bundle of the RadRover 6 Plus Step-Thru Fat Tire e-bike with an extra battery for $1,399 shipped. The e-bike on its own would normally cost you $1,599 without the $200 price cut here, only beaten out by the $1,299 rate from September and the $1,199 low we saw at the top of 2025, though these did not offer the extra battery valued at $499. Despite being the third-lowest price we have tracked overall, this is the largest amount of savings we have seen on this model bundled with the battery. Be sure to add both to your cart for the automatic discount to be applied.

I’ve been hopping aboard my parent’s RadRover 6 Plus e-bike during visits and it’s not hard to see why it’s so popular among riders with its durability and lineup of features, which can be elevated further with additional add-on gear, which my parents went all-out on. Without all those extra bells and whistles, it starts with a 750W brushless geared hub motor that is powered by the semi-integrated 672Wh battery to reach top speeds of 20 MPH while carrying you up to 45+ miles when its five levels of PAS are activated – which is doubled to 90+ miles with the extra battery. If you’re going a shorter distance and not in the mood to do any pedaling, there is the option to ride on pure electric power with the throttle, though keep in mind this cuts down its mileage.

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It’s a solid option for folks who enjoy on-street and off-road treks alike, as the fat Kenda Juggernaut puncture-resistant tires stand up well to swampy terrain during my visits while the electrical system is protected thanks to the water-resistant connectors. You’ll also get it arriving stocked with a Shimano 7-speed derailleur, hydraulic brakes, fenders above both tires, an LED headlight and taillight with brake lighting (and auto-on functions for both), and a LCD display.

Rad Power’s other Earth Day e-bike discounts:

Rad Power’s ongoing low prices (while supplies last):

Rad Power accessory bundles on newest e-bikes:

  • RadExpand 5 Plus Folding e-bike: $1,899
    • 20 MPH for up to 60+ miles
    • comes with any accessory under $200
    • discounts applied when added to cart
  • Radster Road Commuter e-bike: $2,199
    • 28 MPH for up to 65+ miles
    • comes with any accessory under $200
    • discounts applied when added to cart
  • Radster Trail Off-Road e-bike: $2,199
    • 28 MPH for up to 65+ miles
    • comes with any accessory under $200
    • discounts applied when added to cart
  • RadWagon 5 Cargo e-bike: $2,399
    • 28 MPH for up to 60+ miles
    • comes with any accessory under $200
    • discounts applied when added to cart
Anker SOLIX F3800 Portable Power Station

Score an exclusive $680 in savings on a refurbished and expandable Anker SOLIX F3800 power station at $1,999

We’ve secured an exclusive deal for our readers at Wellbots on a refurbished Anker SOLIX F3800 Portable Power Station for $1,999 shipped, after using the code 9TO5RB300 at checkout. This renewed unit is getting brought down from its $2,679 price tag to $2,299 with the initial discount, which drops even lower thanks to our exclusive $300 in additional savings. It’s a solid option for those who want to save a bit more, as a new model normally goes for $3,999 at full price and is currently discounted to $2,599 right now, giving you $600 more in savings ($680 in all) while providing you with the brand’s expandable setup that you can invest more into down the road.

Coming with a two-year warranty, this refurbished Anker SOLIX F3800 station is a well-rounded option to cover camping, tailgating, home backup emergencies, and more. It starts at a 3,840Wh LiFePO4 capacity that can be further scaled up to 26.9kWh with its appropriate expansion batteries. It boasts 15+ port options to cover a variety of needs – including RV and EV power too thanks to the included L14-30R and NEMA 14-50 ports – with a steady output of 6,000W that can surge up to 9,000W.

You can recharge its own battery through an AC wall outlet, or connect up to its maximum 2,400W of solar input, which can refill the battery to 80% in 1.5 hours with ideal conditions. This refurbished model comes rated for 3,000 life cycles when charging up to 80% of its battery, giving you over 8 years of a lifespan were you to do so every single day. With the addition of EcoFlow’s home backup kit this station can cover sectional support for your home’s circuit breaker, or you could expand that to whole-home coverage with connections to roof panels when utilizing the home power panel instead.

– Units are Grade A Refurbished by Anker (Like new condition)
– 2 year warranty applies
– 30 day return policy

EcoFlow DELTA 2 Portable Power Station

EcoFlow flash sale offers DELTA 2 1,024Wh LiFePO4 power station with waterproof bag at $449, more

Running through the rest of the day as part of its ongoing Easter Sale and Mega Sale, EcoFlow has launched the third round of flash sale deals, with the first being the DELTA 2 Portable Power Station bundled with a waterproof bag for $449 shipped. Normally going for $999 outside of these sales, we have seen this power station on its own as low as $399 once before today, but you’re now getting it at $449 with the waterproof bag included to deliver one of the best values we have ever tracked. You’ll also find it matching in price over at Amazon, as well.

Perfect for those upcoming outdoor adventures, the EcoFlow DELTA 2 is an expandable unit that starts with a 1,024Wh LiFePO4 capacity and can go as high as 3,074Wh with the addition of expansion batteries. Its 15 port options cover your devices and appliances with a steady output up to 1,800W, which can surge up to 2,200W with the built-in X-Boost tech that also reduces its recharging times. Within 50 minutes of plugging it into a wall outlet you can have it back to an 80% battery while a full battery takes a little longer at 80 minutes. There’s also the option to connect up to its maximum 500W solar input to take advantage of the sun’s rays to refill its battery in as little as three hours. It also comes rated for 3,000 life cycles up to 80% of its capacity, meaning you could recharge it every day to that amount for over eight years.

The second offer during this flash sale is perfect for those with an existing DELTA Pro Ultra power station and are looking to expand, as you can grab two DELTA Pro Ultra Extra Batteries for $4,599 shipped. Considering that they are currently discounted to $2,499 each right now (down from $3,299 each), you’ll be saving an additional $399 here with the sales pricing and $1,999 off their regular pricing. By adding them to your existing setup, you’ll tack on an additional 12.2kWh capacity for even longer backup power support.

Be sure to check out the full (and differing) lineup of deals from EcoFlow’s ongoing Easter Sale and Mega Sale that are taking up to 65% off power stations through April 14.

Best New Year EV deals!

Best new Green Deals landing this week

The savings this week are also continuing to a collection of other markdowns. To the same tune as the offers above, these all help you take a more energy-conscious approach to your routine. Winter means you can lock in even better off-season price cuts on electric tools for the lawn while saving on EVs and tons of other gear.

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Pennsylvania dairy farm powers its new electric tractor with biogas

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1 hour ago

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April 10, 2025

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Pennsylvania dairy farm powers its new electric tractor with biogas

Farm Generates Biogas to Power Volvo Electric Compact Loader

An 800-head dairy farm in central Pennsylvania is the first in the United States to create a truly circular energy cycle by using recovered biogas to generate the electricity needed to charge the electric wheel loader that pushes feed to its cattle.

Molly Pitcher Dairy in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, uses a Volvo L120 electric wheel loader to feed its 800 head of dairy cattle each daily — and they’re showing other corporate farms that it’s possible to be more productive and more sustainable.

They’re accomplishing this first by deploying quiet, zero-emissions equipment assets that are better for both the health and safety of the farm’s employees and cattle, and second by powering those assets with electricity generated by methane-rich biogas that would otherwise be burned off or vented into the atmosphere.

The dairy uses a 1.5-million-gallon “anerobic digester” to recycles solid and liquid waste generated by the farm’s hundreds of cows (read: poop), producing energy-rich biogas that is used to generate electricity. Molly Pitcher Dairy actually generates enough electricity to power the farm, charge its wheel loader, and have enough left over to sell electrons back to their local grid.

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As for the Volvo L120 Electric wheel loader itself, the machine offers a 6-ton lifting capacity and quiet, precise, vibration-free operation, making it a valuable asset on job sites from construction sites to ports and logistic centers, and on through to waste management and recycling.

Volvo’s L120 Electric delivers between 5-9 hours of continuous on a single charge, depending on the workload. While that’s enough for a typical shift, when the Volvo does need to power up, it can charge from 10-100% in one hour 40 minutes with a 180 kW DC fast charger, or overnight with the same standard L2 (220/240V) outlet that any proper farm already has a welder plugged into.

“This dairy runs 24/7, so the more electric that I can use, the better it is for us economically and for the environment. That is why I was interested in this new electric loader from Volvo,” says the farm’s owner, Keith Jones — but the most important customer feedback at Molly Pitcher Dairy came from the herd. Says Jones, “It took the cows a few passes with the loader to realize it was feeding time because they didn’t hear it driving down the barn aisles. It’s very quiet, and for the cows, that is very nice.”

Molly Pitcher Dairy is one of seven cattle farms across three states owned by the Jones brothers as part of a family business that also includes cattle harvesting and commercial trucking operations.

Electrek’s Take

We’ve written about the greenwashing of poop collecting before, but while experts on one end argue that the LCFS in particular awards credits to farmers at a much higher magnitude than the cost to operate and maintain a methane digester and experts on the other side argue that biomethane still creates burned emission the same way fossil fuels do, the fact remains that the carbon cost of burning biogas is net less than the conventional cost of burning fuel fossil fuels, if only because of the reduced carbon costs typically associated with their refining and transportation (the fact that the biowaste is generated regardless and otherwise wasted should also be considered, but needn’t be in order to realize an immediate “common sense” benefit here).

Don’t get me wrong, there are certainly better ways to power an EV — including wind and solar — but are there much better uses for hundreds of tons of cow poop? You guys are smart. Head down the comments and tell me what they are.

SOURCE | IMAGES: Volvo CE.

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Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.

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Cracks are forming in Elon Musk’s armor of lies

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2 hours ago

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April 10, 2025

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Cracks are forming in Elon Musk's armor of lies

Tesla OpenAi XAI Elon Musk crack in armor of lies

As Elon Musk moves to dismiss a lawsuit from Tesla shareholders claiming he failed his fiduciary duties, OpenAI is now suing Musk and exposing lies, which could help Tesla shareholders.

It looks like cracks are forming in Elon Musk’s armor of lies.

Last year, Tesla investors sued Musk for breach of fiduciary duty and resource tunneling over the founding of xAI, a private AI company under his control.

Musk had previously stated that Tesla would be a major player in AI and that AI products would be critical to Tesla’s future, but in early 2024, the CEO threatened not to build AI products at Tesla if he didn’t get more control over the company by getting more shares.

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He also redirected NVIDIA AI hardware acquired by Tesla to xAI and hired Tesla employees to work at xAI.

In short, Tesla shareholders argue that Musk is in breach of his fiduciary duties to shareholders by creating a private company that competes directly with Tesla. The lawsuit also cites similar issues with Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.

This week, Musk and Tesla board members, who are also defendants in the lawsuit for not stopping Musk, have filed to try to dismiss the lawsuit (via Bloomberg):

The shareholder suit by a group of pension funds and other investors “is long on hyperbole but woefully short on well-pled facts,” the board members said in a court filing Monday. “Yet they cannot escape the undeniable reality: Tesla has thrived under this board and CEO, delivering astronomical returns to stockholders while advancing its mission to create sustainable abundance for all.”

It will likely take a while before the lawsuit moves through the court, but in the meantime, Tesla shareholders have found a strong ally: OpenAI.

Musk has long been tormenting OpenAI with lawsuits. Tesla’s CEO co-founded OpenAI as a non-profit in 2015 to develop an artificial general intelligence that positively contributes to humanity.

In early 2018, Musk resigned from OpenAI, citing “conflicts of interest with Tesla.”

At that time, Tesla’s CEO started pushing the automaker increasingly toward self-driving, which he often described as “real-world AI,” and the automaker began to compete for AI talent with OpenAI.

While he was seemingly on good terms with OpenAI after his departure, a few years later, he started publicly criticizing the organization for moving to a limited for-profit model, which they argued was necessary due to the billions of dollars required to build the compute training hardware to have an impact in the AI sector.

Musk even sued the company over the move and repeatedly publicly mocked them.

It hasn’t been clear how serious the legal actions have been since Musk even claimed that he would drop the lawsuit if OpenAI changed its name:

OpenAI has been defending itself with the release of some emails that show Musk actually agreed for years that the organization needed to move to a for-profit model.

Now, OpenAI has countersued Musk and released more details that show Musk has been misleading the public for years.

It also explains his latest moves at Tesla and xAI.

Musk’s AI effort went from OpenAI to Tesla to xAI

All the documents released by OpenAI as part of the countersuit paint a much clearer picture of Musk’s involvement with AI and how it evolved over the years.

I’ll start with a clear timeline to make it easier to understand.

  • 2010s: Musk has long been fascinated with AI and emerged as one of the most prominent tech voices warning about its dangers.
  • 2015: Musk co-founds OpenAI as a non-profit to try to create a safe AGI.
  • 2017: Musk privately communicates to many people in OpenAI and the AI community that the company needs to switch to a for-profit model and raise billions to be successful due to the cost of AI hardware.
  • 2018: Musk attempted to get control of OpenAI and merge it with Tesla, but this was rejected by OpenAI’s board, which ultimately took investments from Microsoft to start its for-profit arm, as it gave the organization more independence.
  • 2018: Musk leaves OpenAI, citing a conflict of interest with Tesla.
  • 2018-2022: Musk positions Tesla as “the world’s leader in AI”, hires a ton of AI talent, and claims Tesla will “play an important role in AGI”.
  • 2022: Musk sells tens of billions of dollars worth of Tesla stocks, partly to buy an overpriced Twitter.
  • 2023: Shortly after the viral launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Musk creates a new private company, xAI, to develop AI products and compete with OpenAI.
  • 2024: A judge rescinds Musk’s $55 billion Tesla CEO compensation package, which would have increased his stake in Tesla back to where it was before he bought Twitter.
  • 2024: Musk threatens Tesla shareholders that he will not build AI products at Tesla unless he gets more control (aka more shares).
  • 2024: Musk hires Tesla employees for xAI and redirects shipments of AI training compute from Tesla to xAI.
  • 2024: Musk sues OpenAI to try to block its transition into a capped for-profit business.

OpenAI has all the receipts to prove this. I recommend reading all the emails because they give great insights into Musk’s persona and how he presents himself publicly versus what he says privately.

Here are some of the highlights to prove the timeline above:

Early on in the founding of OpenAI in 2015, it was proposed to be a non-profit linked to Y Combinator, Sam Altman’s company at the time, and Musk was already suggesting to make it a regular C corp:

OpenAI shared many internal emails and text messages between the teams, Musk, and Musk’s executive assistant/future baby mama, Shivon Zilis, discussing the need for much more capital, which will require a move to for-profit.

In 2017, as OpenAI was first configuring a potential for-profit arm, Musk tried to take control by asking for preferred shares and a supermajority:

Musk even filed for a new benefit corporation, a for-profit legal structure that aims to generate profits while positively impacting society and/or the environment.

Musk’s full-time money manager, Jared Birchall, is listed as the sole director of the new corporation.

OpenAI rejected Musk’s proposal as it would have given him complete control, but they insisted they still wanted to work with him.

In early 2018, Musk switched up his proposal to try to get OpenAI attached to Tesla:

This proposal also failed, as OpenAI felt this was also an attempt from Musk to gain complete control.

Musk then left OpenAI and focused his AI efforts on Tesla until he significantly reduced his stake in the company to buy Twitter on a whim.

Then, he founded xAI to become his main AI effort as a private company under his control while telling Tesla shareholders that the company was an “AI and robotics play.”

xAI recently absorbed X (Twitter), resulting in a $125 billion company based on Musk’s made-up valuation.

Electrek’s Take

This is extremely revealing. It clearly shows that Musk’s main goal is to have complete control over AI.

He tried to get control of OpenAI, but couldn’t make it work. He then tried to make it work with Tesla, but he screwed up by giving up some control (I’d argue he still has a firm hold on the public company) through the acquisition of Twitter.

He panicked after OpenAI launched ChatGPT and started xAI as a private company entirely under his control, devaluing Tesla in the process – hence the current shareholders’ lawsuit.

For years, Musk attacked OpenAI and lied to the public about disagreeing with the for-profit transition, when he was actually pushing for it since the very beginning. The only difference is that OpenAI was now a competitor to Tesla, and then xAI.

I want to be clear here. OpenAI is not completely clean, either. It obviously owes Musk something for the company’s original funding, but the emails also reveal that the organization tried to give him shares and pay him back, but Musk refused.

His refusal is likely linked to his believing that he could do more damage by suing OpenAI.

It looks like Musk believes that he is some sort of super genius who deserves to be the one in control of a potential future AGI, and he was willing to lie and cheat his way into making it happen.

Even if his intentions are good, that’s a scary thought.

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