Court documents from the ongoing legal battle between Elon Musk and Sam Altman have surfaced a surprising name in the history of artificial intelligence: Valve president Gabe Newell. According to records cited as undisputed facts in the Musk v. Altman proceedings, Newell funneled over $20 million into OpenAI during its formative years. Specifically, in 2018, Newell contributed exactly $20,008,279 to the organization, making him the second-largest individual donor during that four-year window, trailing only Musk himself.
This financial backing was more than a passive investment; Newell served on an informal advisory board, providing strategic guidance to OpenAI leadership including Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. During this era, OpenAI famously used Valve’s own Dota 2 as a primary testing ground for its reinforcement learning agents. The collaboration was so effective that internal teams reportedly grew concerned at how rapidly their AI reached milestones, with some staffers fearing the timeline for achieving human-level intelligence was accelerating faster than their safety protocols could keep up with.
The disclosure of these emails also highlights Newell’s broader obsession with the intersection of the human mind and computer hardware. Correspondence from 2018 shows Newell reaching out to Elon Musk to discuss Neuralink and brain-computer interfaces. Newell admitted in these exchanges that while he once found brain modulation “strange,” he eventually viewed it as a massive future consumer market. This interest has since materialized into his own venture, Starfish Neuroscience, and further investments in companies like Merge Labs, where OpenAI remains a research partner.
Beyond technical investments, Newell acted as a central hub for the industry’s elite. The legal filings describe a 2018 encounter where Newell facilitated a meeting between legendary game designer Hideo Kojima and the OpenAI team following Kojima’s visit to Valve headquarters. These records paint a picture of Newell not just as the head of Steam, but as a quiet, pivotal architect linking the gaming world to the most ambitious—and controversial—frontier of modern technology. Though Newell has remained largely silent on the OpenAI lawsuit, his recent public comments continue to frame AI as a “cheat code” that will fundamentally redefine the workforce.
