“In the event we decide to buy Cerebras, my strong sense is that it’ll be done through Tesla,” Sutskever wrote in September 2017. “But why do it this way if we could also do it from within OpenAI? Specifically, the concern is that Tesla has a duty to shareholders to maximize shareholder return, which is not aligned with OpenAI’s mission. So the overall result may not end up being optimal for OpenAI.”
In an earlier email dated July 2017 from Sutskever to Musk and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman (now the company’s president), Sutskever mentions several Cerebras-related agenda items: “Negotiate merger terms with Cerebras” and “More due diligence with Cerebras.”
The merger deal would ultimately fall through, although it’s not clear from the exhibits why. And OpenAI would end up shelving its chip ambitions for years.