G胖 is very low-key! The founder of Steam once donated 20 million dollars to OpenAI and also introduced Hideo Kojima to meet Musk.

Court documents in the lawsuit involving Elon Musk and OpenAI were unexpectedly leaked, revealing that the founder of Steam once quietly sponsored OpenAI with more than $20 million in 2018 and served as an informal advisor. The documents also disclosed that he helped arrange a meeting between Musk and renowned game producer Hideo Kojima.

Steam founder previously sponsored OpenAI

The lawsuit between Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is in full swing, and court documents submitted as evidence have unexpectedly revealed that Steam founder Gabe Newell (nickname G胖) once quietly sponsored OpenAI with $20,000,000.

In court documents covering 2016 to 2020, it was disclosed that in 2018, Newell donated $20,088,279, making him the second-largest donor over the four-year period, behind only Musk.

Related emails also discussed OpenAI’s early philosophy, such as their initial goal of operating as a nonprofit organization to prevent anyone from gaining too much power over AI.

At the time, there were many doubts and discussions within OpenAI about whether the organization should remain independent or join a large corporation to secure more research funding.

G胖 donated over $20 million and served as an informal advisor

The court documents also show that Newell served as a member of OpenAI’s informal advisory committee at the time, enabling him to provide guidance to leaders such as Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman without holding an official board seat.

At the time, OpenAI was testing its system using the game Dota 2. Because the machine-learning agents performed beyond expectations, the team began to worry that the timeline for AI to reach human-level intelligence would come sooner than expected.

Newell’s interest in AI technology is also linked to “brain-machine interfaces.” This is a technology that establishes a direct connection pathway between an organic brain and external devices, enabling bidirectional information exchange between thoughts-controlled machines and the brain and computers.

An email from 2018 shows that Newell told Musk that he viewed neural modulation in the brain as a huge consumer market, and asked which person on the Neuralink team he should talk to, while Musk shared progress on implanting electrodes into animal brains.

Recently, Newell has invested in a brain-machine interface company called Merge Labs. The company also lists OpenAI as a partner, continuing this long-standing interest.

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Steam founder arranged a meeting for Hideo Kojima with Musk

Also in 2018, Newell asked Musk whether it would be possible for the well-known game producer Hideo Kojima to visit the space company SpaceX.

Newell said that during discussions about the new game Death Stranding (released in 2019) at Valve’s headquarters—where Kojima works—Kojima mentioned his emphasis on the future of AI and expressed an intense desire to go to space, so he proposed introducing him to Musk.

Two days later, Musk replied that he was happy to meet with Kojima and welcomed him to tour SpaceX’s rocket factory. Kojima has previously publicly expressed his love for space, but it is currently not possible to confirm whether he truly completed the visit afterward.

Image source: Musk court documents; Steam founder facilitated Kojima’s meeting with Musk

Emails also mention Neuralink’s confidential progress

In the same email inviting Kojima to visit, Musk further discussed highly confidential advances in the field of neural modulation. He mentioned a procedure involving implanting about 6,000 electrodes into a monkey’s brain and described it as a plot like in the sci-fi novel Neuromancer. This also sparked curiosity about whether, if Kojima visited SpaceX, he would be allowed to watch the monkeys in the laboratory.

At the end of the email, Musk explained in detail the extent of his involvement with OpenAI at the time. It was precisely these discussions about OpenAI’s early operations that made this email a piece of evidence in the current lawsuit, exposing interactions among Newell, Kojima, and Musk.

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