Did Musk once strongly promote OpenAI's ICO fundraising plan? That "what if" from 2018

【Crypto World】Do you remember the ICO craze that once caused a sensation? According to recently released internal call records, Elon Musk briefly embraced token financing in early 2018. At that time, he actually supported a plan for OpenAI to raise about $10 billion through an ICO — which was completely plausible amid the cryptocurrency frenzy of that year.

However, the story wasn’t that simple. Musk later changed his mind. He gradually realized that OpenAI might not be able to raise enough money through this route. More importantly, the 2017-2018 crypto boom made him see the reality clearly, and he ultimately decided to devote himself fully to Tesla’s AI development.

This piece of history is actually quite interesting — it reflects how, during that era, even top minds in the tech industry were pondering how to use tokenization models to promote the development of non-profit organizations. Looking back now, the ICO fundraising wave has faded, but this history precisely shows how explosive the cryptocurrency scene was during that period.