Elon Musk tried to recruit Sam Altman to Tesla AI lab before OpenAI split, trial reveals

Elon Musk tried to hire OpenAI founders to start AI unit inside Tesla

Elon Musk tried to hire OpenAI's founding team, including Sam Altman, to lead a new AI lab within Tesla in 2018, as the AI start-up's leaders grappled over who should control the company and its direction. Musk, a co-founder of the AI group, proposed bringing Altman, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever to his carmaker, appointing Altman to the board or making OpenAI a Tesla subsidiary, according to evidence in a high-stakes trial between the billionaire and the ChatGPT maker on Wednesday. The disclosures shed light on a crucial issue in the case, in which Musk has claimed that Altman "stole a charity" by converting the company into a for-profit. OpenAI's lawyers have argued the Tesla chief executive was happy to commercialise the lab, provided that he remained in charge. Emails, texts and testimony on Wednesday showed that by late 2017 Musk had lost confidence in the non-profit OpenAI's ability to build artificial general intelligence, a powerful form of AI -- and was exploring building his own AI lab within Tesla. "There is little chance of OpenAI being a successful force if I focus on TeslaAI," Musk wrote in a message at the time to Shivon Zilis, who testified in court on Wednesday. Zilis, an OpenAI adviser from 2016 and board member from 2020 until 2023, is the mother of four of Musk's children and was an important interlocutor between the billionaire and the AI lab's other founders during the six-month period on which much of the case hinges. In late 2017, Zilis sketched out plans for an event to "share that Tesla is building a world-leading AI lab (?) which will rival the likes of Google / DeepMind and Facebook AI Research." By early 2018, she laid out nine possible scenarios for achieving AGI. The bulk of those centred on Tesla and included bringing Altman in to run AI at the carmaker. Another proposal was to poach DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis for the same role. These were among the options explored by OpenAI's founders as they weighed the best structure to enable the company to raise enough capital to take on Google while retaining its non-profit mission. Ultimately, OpenAI's executives were not persuaded by Musk's proposals. Zilis told Musk's then-chief of staff Sam Teller in a February 2018 email: "They all think Elon is an incredible human being but that he really hasn't done his homework AI/AGI and that really concerns them about working with him." Musk left OpenAI's board in early 2018 and OpenAI went on to restructure as a for-profit entity with a charitable arm. The world's richest man is suing the company in a case that could alter the fate of OpenAI, which has grown to be an $852 billion behemoth with aspirations for a public listing as early as this year. Musk claims Altman, Brockman and OpenAI unjustly enriched themselves by converting the start-up into a for-profit company. William Savitt, OpenAI's lead attorney in the case, said he believed Zilis's testimony showed Musk was "prepared to do the for-profit, provided he would get control." Speaking after Wednesday's court hearing, Savitt said Musk sought to control governance and "fold OpenAI into Tesla . . . when neither option was available to him he picked up his marbles and went home." Brockman, OpenAI's president, on Tuesday told the jury in Oakland that Musk was seeking "unilateral control over AGI," which he and other founders could not accept. Zilis, a technology expert who has also worked as an executive at Tesla and Musk's brain-implant company Neuralink, told the court on Wednesday that her "allegiance [is] to the best outcome of AI for humanity." She and Musk first had a romantic relationship roughly a decade ago and decided to have children via IVF in 2020. "I . . . really wanted to be a mum. [Musk] was encouraging everyone around him to have children . . . he said if that was ever interesting he'd be able to make a donation," she said. In 2020, two years after the pair had fought over the direction of OpenAI, Altman texted Zilis to ask advice on approaching Musk. She was encouraging, but warned him: "the only thing I wonder is if he'll pull the 'you should have gone with Tesla' card on you."

Elon Musk's lawsuit is putting OpenAI's safety record under the microscope | TechCrunch

Elon Musk's legal effort to dismantle OpenAI may hinge on how its for-profit subsidiary enhances or detracts from the frontier lab's founding mission of ensuring that humanity benefits from artificial general intelligence. On Thursday, a federal court in Oakland heard a former employee and board member say the company's efforts to push AI products into the marketplace compromised its commitment to AI safety. Rosie Campbell joined the company's AGI readiness team in 2021, and left OpenAI in 2024 after her team was disbanded. Another safety-focused team, the Super Alignment team, was shut down in the same time period. "When I joined it was very research-focused and common for people to talk about AGI and safety issues," she testified. "Over time it became more like a product-focused organization." Under cross-examination, Campbell acknowledged that significant funding was likely necessary for the lab's goal of building AGI, but said creating a super-intelligent computer model without the right safety measures in place wouldn't fit with the mission of the organization she originally joined. Campbell pointed to an incident where Microsoft deployed a version of the company's GPT-4 model in India through its Bing search engine before the model had been evaluated by the company's Deployment Safety Board (DSB). The model itself did not present a huge risk, she said, but the company needed "to set strong precedents as the technology gets more powerful. We want to have good safety processes in place we know are being followed reliably." OpenAI's attorneys also had Campbell admit that in her "speculative opinion," OpenAI's safety approach is superior to that at xAI, the AI company that Musk founded that was acquired by SpaceX earlier this year. OpenAI it releases evaluations of its models and shares a safety framework publicly, but the company declined to comment on its current approach to AGI alignment. Dylan Scandinaro, its current head of Preparedness, was hired from Anthropic in February. Altman said the hire would let him "sleep better tonight." The deployment of GPT-4 in India, however, was one of the red flags that led OpenAI's non-profit board to briefly fire CEO Sam Altman in 2023. That incident took place after employees including then-chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and then-CTO Mira Murati complained about Altman's conflict-averse mangement style. Tasha McCauley, a member of the board at the time, testified about concerns that Altman was not forthcoming enough with the board for its unusual structure to function. McCauley also discussed a widely-reported pattern of Altman misleading the board. Notably, Altman lied to another board member about McCauley's intention to remove Helen Toner, a third board member who published a white paper that included some implied criticism of OpenAI's safety policy. Altman also failed to inform the board about the decision to launch ChatGPT publicly, and members were concerned about his lack of disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. "We are a non-profit board and our mandate was to be able to oversee the for-profit underneath us," McCauley told the court. "Our primary way to do that was being called into question. We did not have a high degree of confidence at all to trust that the information being conveyed to us allowed us to make decisions in an informed way." However, the decision to boot Altman came at the same time as a tender offer to the company's employees. McCauley said that when OpenAI's staff started to side with Altman and Microsoft worked to restore the status quo, the board ultimately reversed course, with the members opposed to Altman stepping down. The apparent failure of the non-profit board to influence the for-profit organization goes directly to Musk's case that the transformation of OpenAI from research organization into one of the largest private companies in the world broke the implicit agreement of the organization's founders. David Schizer, a former Dean of Columbia Law School who is being paid by Musk's team to act as an expert witness, echoed McCauley's concerns. "OpenAI has emphasized that a key part of its mission is safety and they are going to prioritze safety over profits," Schizer said. "Part of that is taking safety rules seriously, if something needs to be subject to safety review, it needs to happen. What matters is the process issue." With AI already deeply embedded in for-profit companies, the issue goes far beyond a single lab. McCauley said the failures of internal governance at OpenAI should be a reason to embrace stronger government regulation of advanced AI -- "[if] it all comes down to one CEO making those decisions, and we have the public good at stake, that's very suboptimal."

Week one of the Musk v. Altman trial: What it was like in the room

The stakes are high -- even a partial win for Musk could set OpenAI back as it reportedly plans to go public this year. But most of the attention comes from the spectacle of a feud on X now playing out in federal court. "Cringey texts, raw diary entries, and endless scheming behind the founding and growth of OpenAI are expected to come to light," my colleague Michelle Kim wrote before it began. And the trial unfolds as the cultural backlash against AI swells; some of the signs held by protesters outside the courthouse suggest that to a significant number of people, whatever the outcome of Musk v. Altman, we all lose. Most of us have had to observe the trial from afar, but Michelle, who also happens to be a lawyer, has been in court each day. I caught up with her to learn what's unfolded thus far and what might come next. Can you give us the overview of what this case is actually about? What exactly is being decided, and who is favored right now? Elon Musk is arguing that Sam Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman have breached the company's charitable trust by effectively converting OpenAI into a for-profit company. Musk alleges that is not what they promised him in the company's early days. He has asked for several remedies, like a crazy amount of damages and removing Sam Altman. But the main remedy he wants is unwinding OpenAI's restructuring. [In October 2025 OpenAI struck deals with the attorneys general of California and Delaware that would essentially allow its nonprofit portion to have less day-to-day control of OpenAI. It's a compromise from what OpenAI originally proposed, but Musk still wants to stop it.] OpenAI argues that Elon Musk actually agreed to have the company operate a for-profit arm, because he knew building AI is very expensive. So it's about proving what Musk knew, what he didn't know, and whether he really was deceived by Altman and Brockman. There's a big debate about when exactly Musk found out about this alleged misconduct. Musk founded OpenAI with Altman and Brockman in 2015, and he brought the suit in 2024. There's a statute of limitations for charitable trust claims; you need to have brought a claim within three to four years after you find out about the alleged misconduct. So Musk tries to paint a picture that back in the day he was a little suspicious, but that it was really only in 2022 that he realized OpenAI was no longer committed to its original charitable mission, and that he had been scammed. It's only the first week of trial, but I'm not sure Musk has proved this to the judge and jury.

OpenAI president explains to jury why his diary entries sound greedy

Greg Brockman never wanted to discuss his personal journal in public. But the OpenAI president has been stuck for days doing exactly that, while testifying in a trial in which Elon Musk has alleged that OpenAI abandoned its nonprofit mission to instead focus on personally enriching leaders like Brockman and Sam Altman. "It's very painful," Brockman told OpenAI lawyer Sarah Eddy during his second day on the stand. Although he's not "ashamed" of any of the journal entries, he considers them to be deeply personal, he said. Rather than serving as a straightforward log of his actions or feelings, the entries reflect a stream of consciousness that meanders as it explores alternate viewpoints. Sometimes, Brockman explained, he would jot notes reflecting another person's thoughts, just to feel them out for himself. Because of this, Brockman can appear self-contradictory at times, he testified. Other times, he recorded text messages or Signal messages from people to capture and mull their ideas, he noted. And that supposedly makes it harder to parse his entries out of context. In total, Brockman estimated that his journal has about 100 pages of entries. He started the journal in school and continued using it to mull over big decisions in his professional life, he testified. No one was ever supposed to read the journal but Brockman, he said. But there was no keeping them private after his journal entries were revealed in court filings in January. OpenAI submitted the journals as evidence in October that was initially sealed and then unsealed in January. The entries, Musk's legal team alleged, show the moment when OpenAI leaders decided to abandon the nonprofit mission, with Brockman explicitly discussing stealing a charity from Musk and hoping to earn a billion for his contributions at OpenAI. Ultimately, the OpenAI president had to read some of the most embarrassing entries aloud in front of a jury and a packed courthouse, as well as over a YouTube livestream that peaked at around 1,200 viewers. The entries cited during the trial were written between 2015, when OpenAI was founded, and 2023, when Brockman and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman were briefly ousted as leaders over the OpenAI board's alleged safety concerns. Musk hopes the diary entries paint Brockman as a money-hungry executive who, early on, cared little about OpenAI's mission. To overcome that characterization of his mindset in OpenAI's early days, Brockman has the challenging task of convincing the court that, instead, they show the opposite: displaying the careful musings of the person who is perhaps most committed to OpenAI's mission. Brockman likened to "bank robber" Musk's attorney, Steven Molo, spent the first day of Brockman's testimony isolating passages and demanding that Brockman answer for the apparent greed that his journal entries revealed. For example, Brockman drafted a journal in 2017, around the same time he testified that Musk had delivered an ultimatum: Either Musk would have full control over a for-profit arm of OpenAI, or OpenAI would remain a nonprofit. In that entry, Brockman appears greedy, writing that "we've been thinking that maybe we should just flip to a for-profit. Making the money for us sounds great and all." And Brockman, of course, did make a lot of money after OpenAI created a for-profit arm in 2018, with his stake today worth about $30 billion. More than a dozen times, NBC News reported, Molo asked Brockman to justify his stake, while repeatedly pointing to the journal entry in which the OpenAI president also said that $1 billion was all he wanted for his career goal. "Financially, what will take me to $1B?" Brockman wrote in 2017, while mulling whether Musk was the "glorious leader" he wanted to run OpenAI or if he should back Altman. At a contentious point, Molo asked whether Brockman would consider giving $29 billion back to the nonprofit arm. But Brockman said no, pointing out that he received the stake well before ChatGPT's release spiked OpenAI's value. He also emphasized that he helped grow the best-funded nonprofit in the world. According to The Information, Molo then likened Brockman to a "bank robber" who downplays the theft of only $1 million because there's much more money left in the bank. Brockman forced to explain journal entries Hoping to paint Brockman in a more sympathetic light, OpenAI's lawyer Eddy spent considerable time going over each entry that Molo flagged to allow Brockman to explain his intentions behind his posts. Part of that attempted recovery found Brockman reading earlier passages of the same entry that Molo called out. Those paragraphs showed that at that moment, Brockman was contemplating not just whether OpenAI would need a for-profit arm to achieve its nonprofit mission, but also if he would be happy as an engineer working under Musk. To Brockman, it seemed like OpenAI's mission could be endangered if Musk's co-founders accepted either of the conditions that Musk had raised as acceptable for him to stay on board. The mission could be at risk if Musk ever refused to relinquish control that he desperately sought before leaving OpenAI -- potentially becoming what Brockman said he feared, a sort of "AGI dictator" -- or if Musk ended up quitting OpenAI after the other co-founders agreed to remain a nonprofit. Addressing his "$1B" comment, Brockman testified that weighing his personal happiness was a secondary consideration in the entry to his primary concerns over whether Musk's proposal to lead OpenAI would work to uphold the mission. Additionally, Brockman's journal showed him grappling with whether voting against Musk's plan or for Musk's ejection from the board would be morally wrong. "Can't see us turning this into a for-profit without a very nasty fight," Brockman wrote in another entry. "It'd be wrong to steal the non-profit from him. That'd be pretty morally bankrupt." Further on in the same entry, Brockman seemingly validated Musk's central claim in his lawsuit -- that OpenAI made a fool out of him and stole "free funding." Describing Musk, Brockman wrote, "he's really not an idiot. His story will correctly be that we weren't honest with him in the end about still wanting to do the for-profit just without him." Guided by Eddy, who was repeatedly accused of leading the witness, Brockman testified that his comments on stealing the nonprofit only applied if they'd voted to remove Musk from the board, which never happened. Instead, Musk voluntarily left the board in 2018. When asked whether the journal entry had anything to do with creating a for-profit if Musk left the board on his own, Brockman said no. The same logic applied to the "nasty fight" comments, which Brockman said only applied to circumstances that would have followed Musk's removal from the board. And in the same entry -- when Brockman wrote that he cannot say he's committed to a nonprofit because that would turn out to be a "lie" if they decided to start the public benefit corporation -- he said that he was mulling the conditions that Musk had established, not his own thoughts on committing to the nonprofit. As Brockman explained it, Musk had backed his co-founders into a difficult corner, and he had cut off his donations while keeping tabs on how hard it was to fundraise for the nonprofit. In the end, the other co-founders never committed to keeping OpenAI as a nonprofit, and Brockman testified that nearly all of OpenAI's value today has come from efforts that post-date Musk's involvement. Further, Brockman testified that Musk failed to recognize when OpenAI reached a significant milestone with an early version of ChatGPT, becoming so critical of the first chatbot tool that he saw that the engineer who presented it to him allegedly almost quit the field entirely. Although Musk was an expert on rockets and electric cars, "he did not and I believe does not know AI," Brockman testified, explaining "that was a major concern" and why he ended up backing Altman. To Brockman, Musk issuing the ultimatum seemed like the best way to get out from under Musk, his journals showed. And on the stand, Brockman did not appear to regret his decision, describing Musk as a leader that allegedly damaged team morale and cared little about the team's commitments to AI safety. As an example, Brockman discussed Musk's exit from OpenAI. After Musk announced he was resigning from OpenAI in February 2018, Musk gave a departing speech at an all-hands meeting, Brockman testified. In front of about 40 OpenAI employees, Musk said that he was leaving because the only viable path that he saw forward was for OpenAI to merge with Tesla. However, the other leaders did not think so, Musk said, choosing a different path that Musk would never choose. According to Brockman, the speech was meant to lower morale at OpenAI, as workers understood that Musk was leaving to pursue artificial general intelligence (AGI) at Tesla because he no longer had confidence in OpenAI. Following his speech, Musk took some questions from OpenAI staffers, and Brockman said that one of the first questions raised was how he would do things differently while pursuing AGI at Tesla. Supposedly, Musk shocked OpenAI staff by confirming that his plan was to cut corners on AI safety, while insisting that would be the only way for Tesla to keep up with Google. For Musk, who spent three days on the stand last week, Brockman's testimony was probably viewed as more critical than his own. But Brockman mostly maintained composure while explaining why his journals shouldn't be viewed as a smoking gun proving that Musk was defrauded. Instead, he highlighted a journal that he likely hopes sticks with the jury more than others. In it, he noted that a top reason why he didn't want anyone, including Musk, to have "unilateral control" over how OpenAI runs not because Brockman wouldn't make as much money if Musk had a larger equity share but because that "technology that we're building is just too important."

Elon Musk's Last-Ditch Effort to Control OpenAI: Recruit Sam Altman to Tesla

A few months before Elon Musk left OpenAI's board of directors in February 2018, he tried to recruit Sam Altman to join a "world-class AI lab" within Tesla. Musk went as far as offering the OpenAI CEO a Tesla board seat, according to emails and testimony presented in federal court on Wednesday during the Musk v. Altman trial. The emails were shown to a jury during the cross examination of Shivon Zilis, a former OpenAI adviser and board member who is also the mother of four of Musk's children. Musk's core claim in this lawsuit is that Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman effectively stole a nonprofit, using the $38 million Musk invested to create a private company worth more than $800 billion today. On Wednesday, lawyers for Musk showed video depositions of former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and former OpenAI board member Helen Toner, to raise concerns over Altman's alleged history of deceit. OpenAI's legal team has responded to Musk's claims by questioning his true motives, arguing that the Tesla CEO has had "sour grapes" ever since he failed to assume control of OpenAI in 2017. He has since started a rival, for-profit AI lab. OpenAI's lawyers used Zilis' cross-examination on Wednesday to bring up evidence about Musk's alleged plans to subvert OpenAI, and tried to suggest Zilis was privy to those plans. As it pertains to this case, one of Zilis' most important roles at OpenAI was acting as a conduit between Musk and Altman. In a text from February 2018 presented as evidence, Zilis -- then an OpenAI adviser, as well as a Neuralink and Tesla executive -- asked Altman, "Did you think through a B Corp subsidiary of Tesla?" "There was documentary evidence that, at several points, Mr. Musk had contemplated seeking to join Sam Altman to the board and offered that option," said OpenAI lawyer William Savitt outside the courthouse on Wednesday. "It was part of Mr. Musk's effort to corrupt OpenAI and absorb it into Tesla ... he was trying to get Altman to abandon the mission and be part of Tesla." In an email to Tesla's VP of communications, Sarah O'Brien, from November 2017, Zilis shared a draft of an FAQ page about an event Tesla was planning to hold at the NeurIPS AI conference. "The purpose of this event is to share that Tesla is building a world leading AI lab(?) which will rival the likes of Google / DeepMind and Facebook AI Research," the drafted FAQ read. The document continues, "One major issue for Tesla is when people think of Elon and AI, they think of OpenAI." Another part of the FAQ labeled "Who?" lists several Tesla executives who were planned to lead the unit, including Musk and Andrej Karpathy, a former OpenAI researcher. Altman's name is listed next to Musk's with two question marks beside it. The FAQ is marked up with notes including that Altman could be a moderator for the NeurIPS event, which "could be a forcing function for Sam to commit to TeslaAI." Another note reads that Tesla AI's "strategy had yet to be defined and some of it may be deeply proprietary." Zilis testified on Wednesday that Altman never ended up joining Tesla, and the AI lab and the NeurIPS launch event never came to fruition. She also testified that Musk reached out to Karpathy about recruiting him to Tesla. Savitt told reporters that Zilis' testimony on Karpathy is "directly contrary to what Mr. Musk told the jury just a few days ago." Earlier in this trial, Musk testified that Karpathy left OpenAI of his own volition.

How Elon Musk left OpenAI, according to Greg Brockman | TechCrunch

In late August 2017, key figures at OpenAI (then a small non-profit research lab) gathered to discuss how they would create a for-profit to commercialize its technology and raise the funds needed to realize AGI. Elon Musk was demanding full control of the company and had just given each of his cofounders a Tesla Model 3. CTO Greg Brockman said he saw that as way of buttering them up at a time when Musk and Sam Altman were vying to win support for their respective visions of the company's future. OpenAI's head of research, Ilya Sutskever, had commissioned of a painting of a Tesla to give Musk during the meeting as a friendly gesture. The conversation didn't follow that mood: When Musk was told the others would not accede to his demand for control of the company, Brockman said he got angry and upset. He sat for several minutes thinking quietly. Then, in Brockman's telling, Musk said, "I decline." The SpaceX and Tesla founder "stood up and stormed around the table...I thought he was going to hit me. He grabbed the painting and started to storm out of the room. And then he turned around and said, 'When will you be departing OpenAI?'" Brockman and Sutskever didn't leave or commit to Musk's vision. Musk stopped his regular donations to the company's operating budget, and within six months, he would leave the board, though he paid for office space the company shared with Neuralink until 2020. As today's legal battle over the future of OpenAI proceeds, scrutiny has settled on a key period in 2017 when the the organization's original cofounders disagreed about who would control its future, eventually bringing us Musk's lawsuit against his cofounders. We have yet to hear from Sam Altman, but OpenAI president Greg Brockman testified for two days, often referencing a personal journal that offers a rare insight into what's like to be a 30 year-old tech executive in a pitched battle with Elon Musk. "It's very painful," Brockman said of the publicity around the journal, which he called "deeply personal writings that there were never meant for the world to see. [But] there's nothing in there I'm ashamed of." Cutthroat negotiations between startup founders are rarely shared so publicly, especially when a company becomes as world-changing as OpenAI. We saw a recent taste this rancor when OpenAI's lawyers shared a text message Musk sent to Brockman two days before the trial began: "By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be." The jury won't see that note, but they Musk's lawyers have done their best to realize its spirit. They are trying to show the court that Altman and Brockman "stole a charity," while OpenAI's legal team tries to show that Musk had the exact same plan in mind. The inciting incident for all of this was when an OpenAI model defeated the top human player in the video game DOTA II. Brockman said that convinced everyone in the organization that compute was the key resource to create powerful AI tools, but that fundraising purely as a non-profit would be insufficient. That led to talks about a for-profit subsidiary, of which Musk wanted "unequivocal" control, at least at the start. The other founders said proposed equal shares, and perhaps more more equity comensurate with a cash investment. Another idea on the table was somehow connecting OpenAI to Tesla's AI work. Shivon Zillis, an OpenAI advisor who acted as a go-between for Musk and the team there, said there were more than 20 variations on the plan. But when the other founders wouldn't give Musk control, their partnership unravelled. "It should not be the case that there exists one person with full and absolute control over OpenAI," Brockman testified. Brockman and Sutskever discussed a plan to kick Elon out off OpenAI's board in order to move forward, resulting in a November 2017 journal entries that Musk's lawyers have focused on. '[C]an't see us turning this into a for-profit without a very nasty fight," Brockman wrote. "[I'm] just thinking about the office and we're in the office. and his story will correctly be that we weren't honest with him in the end about still wanting to do the for profit just without him....btw another realization from this is that it'd be wrong to steal the non-profit from him. to convert to a b-corp without him. that'd be pretty morally bankrupt. and he's really not an idiot." That "steal the non-profit" line may seem damning, but the context, according to Brockman, was whether or not to try and toss Musk off the board. They ultimately did not do that. Musk left the board voluntarily in February 2018, concluding that "OpenAI is on a path of certain failure," saying he planned to focus more on AI at Tesla. Brockman described his reflections as an effort to determine whether he would be satisfied with his work life. "This is the only chance we have to get out from Elon," he wrote during the talks. "Is he the 'glorious leader' that I would pick? We truly have a chance to make this happen. Financially what will take me to $1B?" That last reflection was also seized on by Musk's lawyers as a sign that Brockman was thinking more about his personal wealth than the non-profit's mission. Brockman said his current stake in the company is worth almost $30 billion, which became an opportunity for Steve Molo, the main trial attorney for Musk, to berate him. "Why you didn't take the $29 billion more than the billion you said you would be good with, and donate that to the charity?" Molo demanded. "Look at what we accomplished," Brockman replied. "The OpenAI non-profit has over $150 billion of OpenAI equity value. That is something we have built through hard blood sweat and tears, all this time since Elon has left." Molo also dwelt on emails from where Brockman said he will donate $100,000 to OpenAI, something he never did. Ironically, Brockman might be best known to the public for making the largest donation of the 2025 political cycle, $25 million given to MAGA Inc., a SuperPAC supporting President Donald Trump, but that didn't come up in the trial. Molo did mock Brockman's description of the charged meeting around his control of the company as Musk being "mean" to Brockman, and suggested that Brockman didn't understand the governance issues the way Musk, a serial founder, did. Brockman, though, said Musk didn't understand AI. "He did not and does not know AI," he testified, describing Musk dismissing an early demonstration of the software that would become ChatGPT. "We did not think he was going to spend the time required to actually get good at it." "The fact that Elon saw this very early version of the research, that really set all these things in motion, [and] didn't recognize that spark -- that was exactly the kind of thing that was critical to avoid happening in this environment," Brockman said. In 2019, OpenAI would create a for-profit and use it to raise $1 billion from Microsoft. The company would raise $14 billion from the software giant over the next four years, fueling its rise as the leading AI frontier lab. It also fueled the net worth of the company's executives and employees, as well as the assets held by OpenAI the non-profit. And ultimately, those deals fueled Musk's suspicions that Altman and Brockman got one over on him, leading him to file his suit in 2024. The trial is expected to continue through next week.

Musk v. Altman week 1: Elon Musk says he was duped, warns AI could kill us all, and admits that xAI distills OpenAI's models

"I was a fool who provided them free funding to create a startup," Musk told the jury. He said when he cofounded OpenAI in 2015 with Altman and Brockman, he was donating to a nonprofit developing AI for the benefit of humanity, not to make the executives rich. "I gave them $38 million of essentially free funding, which they then used to create what would become an $800 billion company," he said. Musk is asking the court to remove Altman and Brockman from their roles and to unwind the restructuring that allowed OpenAI to operate a for-profit subsidiary. The outcome of the trial could upend OpenAI's race toward an IPO at a valuation approaching $1 trillion. Meanwhile, xAI is expected to go public as a part of Musk's rocket company SpaceX as early as June, at a target valuation of $1.75 trillion. This week's testimony revolved around a central question of the trial: why Musk is suing OpenAI. Musk argued he was trying to save OpenAI's mission to develop AI safely by restoring the company to its original nonprofit structure. OpenAI's lawyer, William Savitt, who once represented Musk and his electric-car company Tesla, countered that Musk was "never committed to OpenAI being a nonprofit" and instead was suing to undermine his competitor. During his direct examination early in the week, Musk painted himself as a longtime advocate of AI safety. He said he cofounded OpenAI to create a "counterbalance to Google," which was leading the AI race at the time. He said that when he asked Google cofounder Larry Page what happens if AI tries to wipe out humanity, Page told him, "That will be fine as long as artificial intelligence survives." "The worst-case scenario is a Terminator situation where AI kills us all," Musk later told the jury. Savitt stood at the lectern and argued that Musk was not a "paladin of safety and regulation." As he cross-examined Musk in his sharp, surgical cadence, Savitt pointed out that xAI sued the state of Colorado in April over an AI law designed to prevent algorithmic discrimination. Musk's lawyer, Steven Molo, sprang to his feet to object. He asked the judge if he, too, could weigh in on ChatGPT's safety record. The lawyers then entered a heated debate about who was the true guardian of AI safety.

Elon Musk's 7 biggest stumbles on the stand at OpenAI trial

Elon Musk seems tired and cranky. On Thursday, he took the stand for the third day in a four-week trial stemming from his lawsuit alleging that OpenAI abandoned its mission and should be blocked from taking the company public later this year. If Musk plays his cards right, Sam Altman could be ousted and OpenAI would remain a nonprofit forever. But Musk stumbled at least seven times in ways that possibly put his chances at winning in jeopardy. Most notable, 1) OpenAI's lawyer managed to get him to make several concessions over his own lawyer's objections. 2) He also lost a fight to keep xAI's safety record off the table, calling his reputation as a supposed AI savior defending OpenAI's mission into question. 3) He repeatedly appeared dishonest, as OpenAI's lawyer showed documents contradicting his testimony. And he twice appeared disingenuous, 4) first when confronted with calling OpenAI's safety team "jackasses," 5) and then again when admitting that he didn't know what "safety cards" are, even though his own AI firm issues them. Perhaps most embarrassing, 6) he testified that he never loses his temper before raising his voice at OpenAI's lawyer. And finally, 7) his lawyers failed to keep his ties to Donald Trump off the record, with the judge agreeing to hear discussions that might further discredit Musk's testimony. Musk faced Altman while testifying Since he was called as the trial's first witness, Musk has spent more than seven hours over the past two days testifying that OpenAI made a "fool" out of him. He repeatedly claimed that OpenAI executives "stole a charity" after accepting $38 million in donations. Musk insists he was conned into giving "free funding" to start a nonprofit that Altman supposedly always intended to turn into an $800 billion company -- not for the benefit of humanity, but to enrich Altman and his co-conspirators. On the other side, Altman and OpenAI -- along with Microsoft, OpenAI's biggest investor -- have argued that Musk is merely jealous. He walked away from OpenAI and now, his own AI company, xAI, lags behind OpenAI. As OpenAI defends its founders and their plan for an initial public offering in the last quarter of 2026, they claim that Musk filed the litigation in a desperate move to slow down his biggest rival so that his firm can catch up. Further, Musk is accused of using the litigation as part of a harassment campaign trolling Altman. Musk's time on the stand was contentious over three days. According to a live feed from The New York Times, within minutes of the third day starting, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers had to reproach Musk, instructing him to stop being sarcastic and evasive. Prior to that, Musk had petulantly refused to answer any questions with a response other than saying, "You just can't steal a charity." Altman did not bother to show up for Musk's first day of testimony, but he apparently wanted to watch Musk's cross-examination. Grilling Musk was William Savitt, an OpenAI lawyer who previously helped Musk with a Tesla case before helping Twitter executives win the lawsuit forcing Musk to buy the social media platform. The tension between them was palpable, and Musk likely felt more exposed on the stand facing a former insider. So far, Savitt has proven to be good at pushing Musk's buttons. Promptly showing emails, documents, deposition testimony, and social media posts that contradict Musk's testimony, the lawyer pushed the billionaire to make concessions before the jury on many topics Musk tried to deflect. That includes getting Musk to acknowledge that he left the company after the other co-founders refused to give him control over a proposed for-profit arm. Musk agreed that at the time he thought it was necessary to create that arm for the good of the nonprofit, which is exactly how OpenAI positions its for-profit shift today. Overall, Savitt's tactics have elicited responses that The Verge reported made Musk appear dishonest and hot-tempered to the jury. Savitt is hoping that at the end of the trial, the judge and jury will agree with his opening statements, which said that "we're here because Mr. Musk didn't get his way at OpenAI. Because he's a competitor, Mr. Musk will do anything to attack OpenAI." While Musk struggled to keep his temper, the whole time, Altman "largely remained stone-faced," the NYT reported. That composure may change when Altman eventually takes the stand and faces Musk's lawyer, of course. Although he's off the hot seat now, Musk's temper could become a persistent problem, as multiple reports indicate it damaged his credibility with the judge and jury. Musk lashed out at Savitt frequently, seemingly bent on making his cross-examination as difficult as possible. In one heated exchange after Savitt noted that Musk's testimony on his OpenAI donations shifted depending on who was asking the questions, Musk accused Savitt of trying to "trick" him with yes-or-no questions that "aren't so simple." At times, Musk's avoidance tactics shut down lines of questioning, ruffling Savitt's feathers. And Gonzalez Rogers was not always sympathetic to the lawyer. After Savitt complained to the judge about "how difficult it is to get concise answers" out of Musk, the judge reminded Savitt, "That is the challenge you have," the NYT reported. Musk lost his temper To defeat Musk, Savitt appears laser-focused on calling Musk's credibility into question after Musk's legal team painted him as a passionate advocate for AI safety. The lawyer seemed particularly successful during a moment when Musk confessed that he didn't know what OpenAI's "safety cards" were, even though his own firm, xAI, releases such cards for Grok, The Washington Post reported. Similarly, Musk was questioned after calling OpenAI's safety team "jackasses" while he was still involved with the company. Musk downplayed the incident, testifying that any insults were intended in the spirit of "don't be a jackass," The Verge reported, rather than personal insults. "I don't lose my temper," and "I don't yell at people," Musk said. He further justified his actions, NBC News reported, as a management tactic to help safety efforts, saying, "sometimes you have to use language that gets people out of their comfort zone. If we're going in the wrong direction... you have to use strong language to get them back on course." Later, The Verge noted that Savitt "baited" Musk into losing his temper in a display for the jury that Musk's testimony perhaps can't be trusted. After Musk insisted he didn't read the "fine print" and only read the "headline" of a 2018 email outlining a proposed corporate structure, Savitt flagged the response as different from his deposition, where Musk claimed he read the first paragraph of the four-page document. The needling seemingly worked, The Verge reported, with Musk "raising his voice and effectively undermining his claims from the morning that he doesn't lose his temper (lol) or yell at people (lmao)," while seemingly doubling down on his inconsistencies. "I said I didn't look closely! I read the headline!" Musk yelled. Musk explained why he's not a hypocrite While the angry flashes may stick with the jury, Musk's apparent hypocrisy, as painted by OpenAI's lawyers, could be what loses him the trial. Several times, Savitt alleged that Musk lied about his feelings about AI safety and charities. After Musk testified that Tesla was not pursuing artificial general intelligence -- where computers can function like human brains -- Savitt confronted Musk with an X post where Musk claimed that "Tesla will be one of the companies to make AGI." Other X posts where Musk "criticized charitable and tax-exempt organizations" as "scams" were also shared in hopes of demonstrating that Musk does not have faith in charities. Savitt hasn't always had to be aggressive. Early on, Savitt took a quieter approach to interrogating Musk, asking the billionaire to agree that a 2016 email showed that early on, he'd warned that setting OpenAI up as a nonprofit may be "the wrong move," since better-funded rivals seemed to be racing ahead. "Deepmind is moving very fast," Musk's email said. "I am concerned that OpenAI is not on a path to catch up. Setting it up as non-profit might, in hindsight, have been the wrong move. Sense of urgency is not as high." Likely, Savitt wanted the jury to question why Musk's AI doomsday scenarios under Altman-led OpenAI would be any less plausible if the company had transitioned to a for-profit under Musk. The lawyer won a fight to talk about xAI's safety record before the jury, and he emphasized that Musk founded xAI as a for-profit company, despite Musk's supposed fears that structure would be untenable for the public good. Now, OpenAI is allowed to pick apart Musk's safety record at xAI -- including its chatbot Grok, which has prompted lawsuits after reportedly generating child sex abuse materials. "You do not get to have grandiose proclamations on safety without some measure of cross-examination," the judge told Musk, overruling his lawyer's objections. Savitt also got Musk to agree that he wanted to control OpenAI, but Musk maintained that his plan was to quickly relinquish that control after more investors got involved. Likening himself to a sort of AI babysitter, Musk said he needed control in case "there was a decision that I thought was very bad." Only then could he "stop it from happening," NYT reported. "It's like if you had a very smart child -- at the end of the day, when the child grows up, you can't really control that child, but you can try to instill the right values," Musk testified, describing his role at OpenAI. "Honesty, integrity, caring about humanity -- being good, essentially." He claimed that he started xAI as a for-profit company simply because that's how he starts all his companies, but that he "deliberately" started OpenAI as a "nonprofit for the public good." That's precisely why he considers Altman shifting the company's infrastructure since then to be a "bait-and-switch," despite previously pitching to OpenAI that Tesla could be used as a "cash cow" if it absorbed the nonprofit, Musk explained. Musk testified on Trump ties Musk's lawyers have attempted to object to several lines of questioning after a failed attempt to exclude some topics that Musk wanted deemed irrelevant -- like his ties to Trump or his ketamine use at Burning Man. "Absolutely none of Musk's political activity relates to any fact that 'is of consequence in determining the action,'" Musk's team argued ahead of the trial. Additionally, "any implication that music festivals or drugs have any relevance to this case is outlandish, and how Musk spends his free time is equally irrelevant." However, OpenAI countered that these topics are relevant and speak to Musk's "bias and credibility." "Musk's activities and state of mind during these discussions is squarely at issue," OpenAI's team argued, while noting that Musk has not denied allegations that drug use may have damaged his memories of events. Musk has claimed that OpenAI only brings up Trump to sway jurors who perhaps are Democrats or dislike the president. But his ties to Trump are particularly relevant, OpenAI argued, because Musk supposedly used his power as an advisor to influence the White House on OpenAI contracts. "At deposition, Musk testified that, while he served as a 'special government employee' he 'complained to White House officials' about OpenAI's 'Stargate' project to benefit his own AI company, xAI," OpenAI argued. "Evidence that Musk used his government position to benefit his company at OpenAI's expense is relevant to Musk's bias and motive and thus to his overall credibility." The judge seems to agree with OpenAI that some of that context is relevant. During Musk's time on the stand, she allowed for discussion of AI safety and Trump without the jury present, The Washington Post reported. Importantly, the judge will make the final call in both phases of litigation, with the jury's opinion in the first phase underway now considered advisory. Whether Musk blew it on the stand has yet to be seen, as the trial continues. On the final day of questioning, Musk's attorney got a chance to make up for any harm to his credibility by asking a few more questions that NYT reported offered Musk the opportunity "come off as more personable and comfortable." Musk may still be called to testify further over the next three weeks, NYT reported.

'I Actually Thought He Was Going to Hit Me,' OpenAI's Greg Brockman Says of Elon Musk

In August 2017, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever gathered at Elon Musk's self-described "haunted mansion," a 47-acre, $23 million estate in Hillsborough, south of San Francisco, to discuss the future of OpenAI. Actor Amber Heard, Musk's then-girlfriend, had served the group whiskey and then dashed off with a friend, Brockman, OpenAI's cofounder and president, testified in federal court during the trial for Musk v. Altman on Tuesday. Ahead of the meeting, Musk gifted Brockman and Sutskever, OpenAI's cofounder and former chief scientist, new Tesla Model 3 cars. "It felt like he was buttering us up," Brockman said on the stand. "He wanted us to feel indebted to him in some way." Sutskever tried to reciprocate for the occasion. The amateur artist presented Musk with a painting of a Tesla. Musk and the other cofounders wanted to establish a for-profit arm to entice investors to give them billions of dollars to pay for compute. But Musk also wanted control of the company, and Sutskever and Brockman objected to granting the Tesla CEO what they believed would be a "dictatorship" over the future of AI development. They proposed having shared control. After several minutes of deliberation, Musk rejected their offer. "He stood up and stormed around the table," Brockman recalled. "I actually thought he was going to hit me, physically attack me." Musk grabbed the painting, said he would cut off his funding of the nonprofit until Brockman and Sutskever quit, and left the room, according to Brockman's testimony. But that night, Musk's so-called chief of staff Shivon Zilis called Brockman and Sutskever "to say it's not over," Brockman testified. "There were discussions of futures that included us." The story of the heated negotiations emerged as Brockman wrapped up his testimony on Tuesday. To OpenAI, the events at the mansion are representative of repeated instances of erratic behavior by Musk that they believe undermine his arguments about the company. Musk contends his roughly $38 million in donations to OpenAI were abused by Brockman and others on the path to creating the $852 billion for-profit venture now known for services such as ChatGPT and Codex. Brockman, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and OpenAI deny any wrongdoing, and the jury in Musk v. Altman could begin deliberating on an advisory ruling as soon as next week. After Tuesday's testimony, William Savitt, an attorney for OpenAI, told reporters that what Brockman had learned in 2017 was how tough it can be to meet one's heroes. Brockman admired and respected Musk's business acumen, but his desire for control was absolute and concerning, Savitt said. Marc Toberoff, an attorney for Musk, told reporters that the true concern was Brockman's motivations for sharing control, with his desire for wealth having faced scrutiny in court a day earlier. For his part, Brockman offered another story on Tuesday to underscore why he thought Musk was not up to the task of controlling an AI company. Brockman recalled then-OpenAI researcher Alec Radford showing Musk an early version of an AI chatbot that didn't generate responses that he liked. Musk "kept saying this system is so stupid, that a kid on the internet could do better," Brockman said. Radford "was absolutely crushed" and "demoralized" to the point that he almost quit the AI research field altogether, Brockman said. Brockman and Sutskever "spent a lot of time" rebuilding his confidence. Musk's inability to see the potential in the early technology -- which eventually became the basis for ChatGPT -- made him unfit to control OpenAI, in Brockman's view. "You needed to dream a little bit," Brockman said. And Musk hadn't shown that he could. Brockman said Tuesday that he, Sutskever, and Altman considered voting Musk off the OpenAI nonprofit board as negotiations with him about a for-profit sibling company dragged on for months. They would meet again over whiskey at Musk's mansion to discuss alternative funding options. There was agreement over what not to do, but little on what to do instead. But Brockman and Sutskever decided removing Musk felt "wrong," Brockman testified. Eventually, Musk left on his own after deeming OpenAI was on a path of "certain failure," according to an email he wrote in early 2018. Zilis, then an adviser to both OpenAI and Musk, kept him informed about developments at the AI venture in the years to come. "She was proxy Elon in some ways," Brockman said, referring to her as "a friend" who he had first met in 2012 or 2013.

Mira Murati tells the court that she couldn't trust Sam Altman's words

Mira Murati, OpenAI's former CTO, has testified under oath that CEO Sam Altman lied to her about the safety standards for a new AI model. In a video deposition shown during the ongoing Musk v. Altman trial on Wednesday, Murati said Altman falsely stated that OpenAI's legal department determined a new AI model did not need to go through the company's deployment safety board. "As you understand it, was Mr. Altman telling the truth when he made that statement to you?" Murati was asked in the deposition. "No," Murati said. Murat said that during her tenure at OpenAI, Altman made her work more difficult. Her criticism "is completely management related," she said. "I had an incredibly hard job to do in an organization that was very complex. I was asking Sam to lead, and lead with clarity, and not undermine my ability to do my job." The safety situation around one of OpenAI's GPT models was an example. Murati testified that after speaking with Altman, she checked with Jason Kwon, who joined OpenAI in 2021 as its general counsel and is now the company's chief strategy officer. Murati said that there was "misalignment" between what Kwon and Altman; "I confirmed that what Jason was saying and what Sam was saying were not the same thing." To be safe, she said, she made sure the model went through the board. It's not the first time Altman has been accused of lying. Cofounder Ilya Sutskever, in part of a 52-page memo to OpenAI's board that was read in a deposition, said that Altman "exhibits a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs, and pitting his execs against one another." Former OpenAI board member Helen Toner, in a 2024 podcast where she discussed Altman's brief firing in November 2023, also said that OpenAI executives had shared evidence with the board of Altman "lying and being manipulative in different situations." Murati agreed with descriptions of Altman as pitting executives against each other and undermining her. The board, when it fired Altman, said that he "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI." (When Altman was asked by The Verge why he thought the board lost trust in him, Altman said that "That will be a better question for them.") Murati was briefly appointed interim CEO after OpenAI's board fired Altman. However, in testimony, she criticized the board's decision and said "OpenAI was at catastrophic risk of falling apart." She left OpenAI in 2024 and later founded her own OpenAI rival, Thinking Machines Lab.

Musk Says No Written Agreement for His Early Donation to OpenAI

Elon Musk acknowledged there was no written agreement or contract with OpenAI regarding the terms of his donation to the company when it was first founded as a nonprofit research organization more than a decade ago. Under questioning from OpenAI attorney William Savitt, Musk said he did not have his representatives prepare a document to lay out the conditions for the money he committed to OpenAI in its early days. Asked again whether he had done so, Musk said he "reviewed the corporate charter, which said it is a nonprofit." "At the end of the day, you can't steal a charity," he said, repeating his refrain from earlier in his testimony. The tense questioning kicked off Musk's third day of testimony in a closely watched trial over his claims that OpenAI betrayed its altruistic mission in pursuit of profit. In the lawsuit he filed in 2024, Musk alleged that Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief executive officer, and Greg Brockman, its president, have enriched themselves by converting the company to a for-profit business with billions of dollars in support from Microsoft Corp. OpenAI and Altman have accused Musk of harassment and say the real goal of the lawsuit is to undercut competition with his own startup that he co-founded in 2023, xAI. When announcing its launch in 2015, the nonprofit said Musk committed to eventually donating as much as $1 billion to its mission to develop artificial intelligence for the "benefit of humanity." In a post on X in 2023, Musk wrote that he had donated $100 million. The actual amount was far less. "In strict monetary terms, I contributed $38 million," Musk said this week. Much of Musk's testimony to date has been about his falling out with OpenAI's leaders as they explored strategies to line up sufficient funding to compete with Alphabet Inc.'s Google and other pioneers in the AI space that were operating as for-profits. Musk left OpenAI's board in 2018 and went on to launch xAI as a for-profit five years later. xAI's flagship chatbot, Grok, is known for its irreverant responses and previously ignited a global uproar for generating non-consensual explicit photos. OpenAI's lawyer asked Musk whether he believes his companies -- including SpaceX and Tesla Inc. -- are good for society, pointing at how he's posted about AI and robots being beneficial for humanity. Musk replied yes to all. "There are many possible futures. Some futures are good and some are not good," he said. "It is better to err on the side of optimism." Musk also said xAI has "partly" distilled some of OpenAI's technology for developing its own models by using their AI to validate and compare chatbot responses. Bloomberg News has reported that xAI engineers have also used Anthropic's models for coding. Before Musk returned to the stand, his attorney Steven Molo argued with US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers over whether an expert witness could testify about potential existential risks from AI, including human extinction. Gonzalez Rogers rejected his argument. "It is also ironic that your client, despite these risks, is creating a company that's in the exact space," she said. "I suspect there are plenty of people who don't want to put the future of humanity in Mr. Musk's hands. But it doesn't matter. We aren't going to get into those issues."

Elon Musk tried to recruit Sam Altman for role at Tesla before falling out at OpenAI

Elon Musk tried to hire OpenAI's founding team, including Sam Altman, to lead a new AI lab within Tesla in 2018, as the AI start-up's leaders grappled over who should control the company and its direction. Musk, a co-founder of the AI group, proposed bringing Altman, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever to his carmaker, appointing Altman to the board or making OpenAI a Tesla subsidiary, according to evidence in a high-stakes trial between the billionaire and the ChatGPT maker on Wednesday. The disclosures shed light on a crucial issue in the case, in which Musk has claimed that Altman "stole a charity" by converting the company into a for-profit. OpenAI's lawyers have argued the Tesla chief executive was happy to commercialise the lab, provided that he remained in charge. Emails, texts and testimony on Wednesday showed that by late 2017 Musk had lost confidence in the non-profit OpenAI's ability to build artificial general intelligence, a powerful form of AI -- and was exploring building his own AI lab within Tesla. "There is little chance of OpenAI being a successful force if I focus on TeslaAI," Musk wrote in a message at the time to Shivon Zilis, who testified in court on Wednesday. Zilis, an OpenAI adviser from 2016 and board member from 2020 until 2023, is the mother of four of Musk's children and was an important interlocutor between the billionaire and the AI lab's other founders during the six-month period on which much of the case hinges. In late 2017, Zilis sketched out plans for an event to "share that Tesla is building a world-leading AI lab (?) which will rival the likes of Google / DeepMind and Facebook AI Research". By early 2018, she laid out nine possible scenarios for achieving AGI. The bulk of those centred on Tesla and included bringing Altman in to run AI at the carmaker. Another proposal was to poach DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis for the same role. These were among the options explored by OpenAI's founders as they weighed the best structure to enable the company to raise enough capital to take on Google while retaining its non-profit mission. Ultimately, OpenAI's executives were not persuaded by Musk's proposals. Zilis told Musk's then-chief of staff Sam Teller in a February 2018 email: "They all think Elon is an incredible human being but that he really hasn't done his homework AI/AGI and that really concerns them about working with him." Musk left OpenAI's board in early 2018 and OpenAI went on to restructure as a for-profit entity with a charitable arm. The world's richest man is suing the company in a case that could alter the fate of OpenAI, which has grown to be an $852bn behemoth with aspirations for a public listing as early as this year. Musk claims Altman, OpenAI and its partner Microsoft unjustly enriched themselves by converting the start-up into a for-profit company. William Savitt, OpenAI's lead attorney in the case, said he believed Zilis's testimony showed Musk was "prepared to do the for-profit, provided he would get control". Speaking after Wednesday's court hearing, Savitt said Musk sought to control governance and "fold OpenAI into Tesla . . . when neither option was available to him he picked up his marbles and went home". Brockman, OpenAI's president, on Tuesday told the jury in Oakland that Musk was seeking "unilateral control over AGI", which he and other founders could not accept. Zilis, a technology expert who has also worked as an executive at Tesla and Musk's brain-implant company Neuralink, told the court on Wednesday that her "allegiance [is] to the best outcome of AI for humanity". She and Musk first had a romantic relationship roughly a decade ago and decided to have children via IVF in 2020. "I . . . really wanted to be a mum. [Musk] was encouraging everyone around him to have children . . . he said if that was ever interesting he'd be able to make a donation," she said. In 2020, two years after the pair had fought over the direction of OpenAI, Altman texted Zilis to ask advice on approaching Musk. She was encouraging, but warned him: "the only thing I wonder is if he'll pull the 'you should have gone with Tesla' card on you."

Musk v Altman and the 'manifest destiny' of AI

May 6 (Reuters) - For the past week and a half, I've been watching Silicon Valley's biggest soap opera play out in a courtroom in Oakland, California. The stakes are nothing short of the future of AI, which to these longtime founders - Elon Musk and Sam Altman - actually means the fate of the world. I've been listening to hours of testimony as the two sides tear each other apart, arguing over why the other isn't fit to control artificial intelligence. A few questions come to mind. What does it mean to be "in charge" of AI? What qualifies you for the role? Why do so many people in Silicon Valley think they can do the job? Are we all in the right hands? Read on for more details from the courtroom and why "rhino ket" is playing a role in one of history's most important technological shifts. OUR LATEST REPORTING IN TECH AND AI Exclusive - Rivian mulls making its own lidar sensors, possibly in partnership with Chinese firms Exclusive - Top Google scientist says EU data measures pose privacy risk for users OpenAI co-founder discloses nearly $30 billion stake, financial ties to Altman DeepSeek could be valued at up to $50 billion in first fundraising, sources say Alphabet closes in on Nvidia's spot as world's biggest company Google Cloud pulls ahead as Big Tech's AI bet swells to $700 billion 'MANIFEST DESTINY' At the center of the Oakland ⁠court dispute is OpenAI, a nonprofit research lab cofounded in 2015 by a group including Musk and Altman. Musk, who parted ways with OpenAI in 2018, sued the company, Altman and OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman in 2024. The Musk v. Altman trial is now unfolding in painfully personal terms. Musk's team argues that OpenAI betrayed its mission to make its leaders rich. OpenAI's lawyers say Musk is simply angry that OpenAI succeeded without him. "If you have someone who is not trustworthy in charge of AI, I think that's a very big danger for the whole world," Musk said on the first day of his testimony. OpenAI was supposed to address that very issue. The nonprofit was designed as a counterweight to Google's DeepMind, whose leaders Musk believed didn't prioritize AI safety enough. OpenAI would be different. Early on, Altman proposed to Musk that OpenAI be overseen by a five-person board of Altman, Musk, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz. AI would be used for "the good of the world," Altman wrote, adding that in some cases, "the five of us would decide" how AI would be deployed. By 2017, Musk was fighting for control of the company, but said he could expand OpenAI's board to ⁠as many as 16 members "if this board really ends up deciding the fate of the world." "It reminds me of manifest-destiny language," said Sarah Myers West, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, which studies AI's impact on society. She's referring there to the 19th-century philosophy that America's God-given fate was to dominate the continent. She summarized OpenAI's early philosophy like so: "Only I am responsible enough to have control over this technology." It's a momentous task, and Musk v. Altman is giving us more detail on the people who say they are up to it. The discovery process has exposed private texts, financial records and even Brockman's personal diary to the public sphere. Lawyers have ⁠displayed those messages on a large screen in court. Musk's lawyers say Brockman's diary shows he was always motivated by money. "It would be nice to be making the billions," Brockman wrote. His stake in OpenAI is now worth nearly $30 billion and OpenAI has done splashy deals with some of the startups that Brockman backed, including Cerebras and Helion. In his testimony, Brockman relayed a vivid account of Musk's temper. During one tense meeting over equity structure, Brockman ⁠said Musk stood up so angrily that "I actually thought he was going to hit me." Brockman also said that Musk still doesn't understand AI. The pretrial haggling shows the trial could have been uglier. In one court filing, OpenAI lawyers suggested that perhaps Musk didn't remember the 2017 negotiations clearly because he went to the Burning Man festival. In a deposition, OpenAI asked what he knew about rhino ket, ⁠a powerful variant of ketamine. Musk, who has previously said he uses ketamine occasionally, said he'd never heard of rhino ket. Musk's lawyers said the line of questioning was irrelevant to the case. West advocates for a different model, where legislation and society hold CEOs to account. "This is not the behavior of upright citizens who are acting responsibly," West said. "But also the world where we are relying on CEOs to do right by the tech that is so economically valuable isn't what we want either." Writing by Deepa Seetharaman, Editing by Ken Li and Rosalba O'Brien Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Worries about AI's risks to humanity loom over the trial pitting Musk against OpenAI's leaders

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) -- At the heart of the trial pitting Elon Musk against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is a moment when they found common cause on an ever more pressing question: how to protect humanity from the risks of artificial intelligence. It turned sour, and the jury is charged with settling the ensuing legal dispute between the two Silicon Valley titans. But the unresolved questions about the dangers of AI have been looming over the federal courthouse in Oakland, California, since the trial began last week. The technology itself is not on trial - the judge has warned lawyers not to get "sidetracked" by questions about its dangers - but witness testimony has touched on concerns around workforce disruptions and the prospect raised by Musk that superhuman AI might one day kill us all. Musk, the world's richest person, filed the case accusing his fellow OpenAI co-founder of betraying promises to keep the company as a nonprofit. Altman, in turn, accuses Musk of trying to hobble the ChatGPT maker for the benefit of his own AI company. One witness, AI pioneer Stuart Russell, said that the "winner take all" power struggle over AI's future is itself threatening humanity. Musk's lawyers brought Russell to the stand as an expert witness, at the rate of $5,000 an hour. The University of California, Berkeley computer scientist listed a host of AI dangers, from racial and gender discrimination to jobs displacement, misinformation and emotional attachments that take some AI chatbot users down a spiral of psychosis. "Whichever company develops AGI first would have a very big advantage" and an increasingly big lead over everyone else, Russell told the court, using the initials for artificial general intelligence, a term for advanced AI technology that surpasses humans at many tasks. The trial centers on the 2015 birth of OpenAI as a nonprofit startup primarily funded by Musk. Both Musk and Altman, who has not yet testified in the trial, have said they wanted OpenAI to safely develop AGI for the benefit of humanity and not for any one person's gain or under any one person's control. And both camps allege it's the other guy who was trying to control it. A jury of nine people selected from the San Francisco Bay Area will get to say which one of them is telling the truth. Early on, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers warned lawyers, particularly Musk's, not to delve into broader AI concerns that go beyond Musk's claims that OpenAI violated its charitable mission. "This is not a trial on the safety risks of artificial intelligence. This is not a trial on whether or not AI has damaged humanity," Gonzalez Rogers told lawyers before jurors arrived at the federal courthouse. Still, Musk managed to skirt that guidance in his testimony last week. Asked to describe artificial general intelligence, Musk said it is when AI becomes "as smart as any human," and added that "we are getting close to that point," and AI will be smarter than any human as soon as next year. Musk said he has "extreme concerns" about AI and has had them for a long time. Musk said he wanted a "counterpoint" to Google, which at the time had "all the money, all the computers and all the talent" for AI, with no counterbalance. "I was concerned AI would be a double-edged sword," he said. During his testimony, Musk repeatedly said that he could have founded OpenAI as a for-profit company, just like the other companies he started or took over. "I deliberately chose this," he said, "for the public good." The judge expressed some skepticism. In comments to lawyers last week before the jury came into the room, Gonzalez Rogers pointed out that Musk, "despite these risks, is creating a company that is in the exact same space," referring to the billionaire's xAI artificial intelligence company, which launched in 2023 and has since merged with Musk's rocket company SpaceX. OpenAI's side also claims its goals are to benefit the public. OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman, a defendant in Musk's lawsuit along with Altman and their company, said he thought the technology OpenAI was developing was "transformative" -- bigger than corporations, corporate structures and bigger than any one individual. It was, he said, "about humanity as a whole." Brockman testified this week that his No. 1 goal was always the "mission" of OpenAI and it was Musk who sought unilateral control over the company. Brockman recalled a meeting where at first Musk seemed open to the idea of Altman being OpenAI's CEO. In the end, however, "he said people needed to know he was in charge." In addition to damages, Musk is seeking Altman's ouster from OpenAI's board. If Musk wins, it could derail OpenAI's plans for an initial public offering of its shares.

OpenAI trial: Brockman rebuts Musk's take on startup's history, recounts secret work for Tesla

OpenAI President Greg Brockman concluded his testimony on Tuesday, where he largely rebutted Elon Musk's account of the early years of the startup and negotiations that occurred at the company. Brockman testified that he never made any commitments to Musk about the company's corporate structure, and he never heard anyone else make them. He emphasized that OpenAI is still a nonprofit. "This entity remains a nonprofit," Brockman said. "It is the best-resourced nonprofit in the world." The trial for Musk's lawsuit against the artificial intelligence company began its second week on Monday. Musk sued OpenAI, Brockman and CEO Sam Altman two years ago, alleging that they went back on their vow to keep the company a nonprofit. Musk testified during the trial's first week of proceedings, where he repeatedly accused Altman and Brockman of trying to "steal a charity." Brockman, who spoke from the witness stand in federal court in Oakland, California, over the course of two days, also revealed that Musk had enlisted several OpenAI employees to do months of free work for him at Tesla, Musk's electric vehicle company. That work mainly included efforts to overhaul the company's approach to developing self-driving technology there in 2017. During his two days on the stand, Brockman answered questions about his personal financial ambitions, his understanding of OpenAI's structure and Musk's involvement at the company, which they co-founded with other executives in 2015. In Musk's testimony last week, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said that the time, money and resources he poured into OpenAI had been integral to the company's success. He repeatedly said that he helped recruit the company's top talent. Brockman said Tuesday that while Musk was helpful in convincing some employees to take the leap to join OpenAI, he was a polarizing figure for others. "Elon had a reputation of being an extremely hard driver," Brockman said. He added that "certain candidates were very attracted" by Musk's involvement at OpenAI, and that "certain candidates were very turned off."

Elon Musk's Confidante Shivon Zilis Is Cast as His Inside Source at OpenAI

After Microsoft invested $10 billion in OpenAI in early 2023, Elon Musk said in a social media post that OpenAI was "effectively controlled" by the tech giant. Shivon Zilis, a confidante of Mr. Musk who had spent years working for his companies and had approved the Microsoft deal as a member of OpenAI's board of directors, disagreed. "You are naïve," he told her. Ms. Zilis, who is also the mother of four of Mr. Musk's children, described her private conversation with the world's richest man during testimony on Wednesday in a blockbuster trial in an Oakland, Calif., federal court that pits Mr. Musk against OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman. Mr. Musk sued OpenAI two years ago, accusing the artificial intelligence company of breaching its founding contract by putting commercial gain over the public good. He founded OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015 with Mr. Altman and a group of A.I. researchers. But after a power struggle with Mr. Altman, Mr. Musk quit. Mr. Altman and the other founders later attached a for-profit company to the A.I. lab and began raising billions of dollars from Microsoft and other investors. Now Mr. Musk is asking for $150 billion in damages and a court order that would unravel the for-profit company that OpenAI created. He also wants to remove Mr. Altman from OpenAI's board of directors. Ms. Zilis had a unique view of the yearslong struggle between Mr. Musk and Mr. Altman. She started working for OpenAI as an adviser in 2016, developed friendships with Mr. Altman and OpenAI's president, Greg Brockman, and had a romantic relationship with Mr. Musk around the same time, according to her testimony. Ms. Zilis worked as Mr. Musk's de facto chief of staff, Mr. Musk said during his own testimony last week. Ms. Zilis denied on Wednesday that was her role, but she said she worked for three of his ventures: OpenAI, the electric car company Tesla and the brain-implant company Neuralink. OpenAI's lawyers tried to paint Ms. Zilis as Mr. Musk's woman on the inside at OpenAI. Mr. Musk, they say, was always aware of what was happening at the A.I. lab -- in fact, Ms. Zilis kept him well-informed -- but he did not sue until OpenAI had a hit on its hands with the chatbot ChatGPT. After Mr. Musk left OpenAI in 2018, Mr. Musk appeared to want her to stay on the board so she could keep him informed about its work, according to evidence in the trial. He also discussed with her poaching OpenAI employees for Tesla. "Do you prefer I stay close and friendly with OpenAI to keep info following or begin to disassociate? Trust game is about to get tricky so any guidance for how to do right by you is appreciated," she said in a text message to Mr. Musk. "Close and friendly but we are going to actually try to move three or four people from OpenAI to Tesla," Mr. Musk replied. OpenAI's president, Greg Brockman, said in testimony on Tuesday that when Ms. Zilis joined OpenAI's board, many at the company were wary of her. But he said he trusted her to keep her work with Mr. Musk separate from her involvement with OpenAI. While Ms. Zilis was serving on the board, she told Mr. Brockman that she was pregnant but did not tell him that Mr. Musk was the father, Mr. Brockman said. He learned that Mr. Musk was the father from news stories, he said. When Mr. Brockman asked Ms. Zilis about the stories, he said she told him that she had conceived through in vitro fertilization and that her relationship with Mr. Musk was platonic. Ms. Zilis said on Wednesday that she had a romantic relationship with Mr. Musk going back at least a decade. But, during testimony, she said she did not reveal that Mr. Musk was the father of her children until a reporter from Business Insider contacted her to say the publication was about to release a story naming him as the father. Ms. Zilis felt comfortable with OpenAI's $10 billion deal with Microsoft while she was still on the board. But she said she grew more concerned about OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft after she left the board in 2023 and after her conversation with Mr. Musk. Her worries escalated after OpenAI's board fired Mr. Altman in late 2023 and Microsoft helped him get his job back five days later. She concluded the nonprofit was no longer in control of the for-profit company. "I remember being terrified," she said. "After that ouster happened, everything we put together over so many years with the nonprofit lost its teeth and it was not able to fulfill its role." Sarah Eddy, a lawyer for OpenAI, showed a document that Ms. Zillis wrote in 2017 in which she helped plan an event at Tesla, saying the electric car company planned to compete with the world's leading A.I. companies. OpenAI's legal team has repeatedly argued that Mr. Musk worked to compete with OpenAI through his own for-profit companies. Mr. Musk acknowledged during his own testimony that he tried to fold OpenAI into Tesla that same year. Before Ms. Zilis took the stand, the court heard a video deposition from Mira Murati, who joined OpenAI in 2018 and served as its chief technology officer from 2022 until late 2024. Her testimony focused on the weeks before and after the brief firing of Mr. Altman. Before Mr. Altman was fired, she said, she did not completely trust him, because he was not always candid with her and that he sometimes undercut her role as a key executive. "It was completely management related," she said. "I was asking Sam to lead with clarity and not undermine my job." She also criticized OpenAI's board over the way it handled Mr. Altman's firing. She said that the board was not transparent about its reasons for firing Mr. Altman and that they did not understand the consequences. "They were not prepared for the transition and stabilizing the company," Ms. Murati said. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied the suit's claims.)

Brockman takes the stand in OpenAI trial after Musk's settlement text, with his own journals calling the nonprofit mission 'a lie'

Elon Musk texted Greg Brockman two days before trial to ask about settling. Brockman suggested Musk drop all claims against the individuals. Musk replied: "By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be." The exchange, disclosed in a court filing on Sunday, was not shown to the jury. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that settlement communications are inadmissible. But the text captures the dynamic that has defined the first week of the most consequential AI trial in history: a dispute that both sides had the opportunity to resolve privately, and that both sides chose to fight publicly, for reasons that their own private writings make uncomfortably clear. Brockman is expected to take the stand on Monday in the federal courthouse in Oakland, California, where the trial over OpenAI's nonprofit-to-profit conversion began last week with $150 billion at stake. Musk is suing OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Brockman, alleging that approximately $38 million he donated to the nonprofit was used for unauthorised commercial purposes. He is seeking tens of billions of dollars in damages, the removal of Altman and Brockman from their positions, and the unwinding of the for-profit conversion that OpenAI completed in October 2025, when it restructured into OpenAI Group PBC with an $852 billion valuation, the OpenAI Foundation retaining a 26 per cent stake, and Microsoft holding 27 per cent. Musk dominated the first week on the stand, testifying over three days, calling himself "a fool" for funding OpenAI, accusing its leadership of "looting the nonprofit," and repeatedly telling the jury: "You can't just steal a charity." Under cross-examination, he clashed with OpenAI's lawyers, who pressed him on his competing AI company xAI, which he valued at $250 billion in its February merger with SpaceX while describing it in court as a fraction of OpenAI's size. Musk acknowledged that xAI had "partly" used OpenAI's technology to train its own models through distillation, a concession that complicates his positioning as a wronged benefactor rather than a competitive rival. Brockman's testimony is expected to be more damaging to his own side than to Musk's, because the most cited evidence against OpenAI's leadership comes from Brockman's personal journals. In entries that Musk's lawyers obtained through discovery, Brockman wrote: "Financially, what will take me to $1B?" In another entry, he described his public commitment to OpenAI's nonprofit mission as "a lie." Judge Gonzalez Rogers cited these journal entries in January when she denied OpenAI's motion to dismiss the case, writing that the entries "suggest Brockman intended to deceive" about the organisation's charitable purpose. OpenAI's lawyers have fought to contextualise the journals. They argue that the entries are "staged for maximum misrepresentation," cherry-picked from hundreds of pages of reflective personal writing that includes self-doubt, aspiration, and the kind of unguarded introspection that looks incriminating when extracted from its full context. The defence will likely present Brockman's journals as stream-of-consciousness reflection, not evidence of a plan to defraud. Whether the jury reads them as private ambition or premeditated deception will shape the outcome of the trial. The tension is structural. Brockman has been OpenAI's most prominent public advocate for the company's technical ambitions, recently claiming that AI now writes 80 per cent of OpenAI's code. He returned from an extended leave in November 2024 as the company's "builder-in-chief," the executive responsible for translating Sam Altman's trillion-dollar vision into operational reality. His journal entries, written during the period when OpenAI was still formally a nonprofit, suggest that the commercial ambitions he now executes were present long before the corporate structure changed to accommodate them. The pre-trial settlement exchange adds a layer that neither side's narrative fully accounts for. Musk reached out to Brockman on 25 April, two days before jury selection, to gauge interest in resolving the case. The fact that Musk initiated contact suggests he recognised the risks of trial, not least the cross-examination that would expose xAI's own use of OpenAI's work. Brockman's response, proposing that Musk drop all claims against the individuals, was a non-starter: Musk's entire case rests on the argument that Altman and Brockman personally betrayed the nonprofit mission. Dropping individual claims would have gutted the lawsuit. Musk's subsequent text, threatening to make Brockman and Altman "the most hated men in America," is the kind of statement that would ordinarily be devastating if presented to a jury. The judge's ruling that settlement communications are inadmissible means the jury will not see it. But the exchange has already shaped the public narrative of the trial, reinforcing Musk's pattern of treating legal disputes as extensions of his social media persona: escalate, threaten, perform outrage, and frame the conflict as a moral crusade rather than a commercial rivalry. What the jury will decide is narrower than what the trial represents. The legal questions concern whether OpenAI's conversion from a nonprofit to a for-profit public benefit corporation violated charitable trust obligations, whether Musk's donations were obtained through misrepresentation, and whether the individuals who executed the conversion enriched themselves at the expense of the organisation's stated mission. Musk's lawyers have asked for up to $134 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, a figure that reflects not the value of Musk's original donations but the scale of the commercial enterprise those donations helped create. The broader question is whether a nonprofit AI research lab can legally become an $852 billion for-profit company and distribute equity to its founders. OpenAI completed that conversion with the approval of the attorneys general of California and Delaware in October 2025, structuring the new entity so that the Foundation appoints all board members of the PBC and can remove them at any time. The company then raised $122 billion from Amazon, Nvidia, SoftBank, and others, ended Microsoft's exclusive licensing arrangement, and began laying groundwork for an IPO at a potential valuation of $1 trillion. The commercial expansion that Musk calls theft is, from OpenAI's perspective, the fulfilment of its mission at a scale that the original nonprofit structure could never have supported. Both sides are asking the jury to accept a version of events that their own private communications complicate. Musk presents himself as a selfless donor who funded a nonprofit to benefit humanity and was betrayed when its leaders converted that work into personal wealth. His own actions, founding a competing AI company, valuing it at $250 billion, acknowledging that it used OpenAI's technology, and attempting to settle the case days before trial, suggest motivations more complex than altruism. His approach to corporate control at SpaceX, where the IPO filing confirms that Musk and insiders retain dominant voting power through a dual-class share structure, indicates that his objection to OpenAI's governance is not to concentrated control itself but to concentrated control by people other than him. Brockman and Altman present themselves as mission-driven founders who built the most important AI company in the world and structured its conversion to preserve nonprofit oversight. Brockman's journals, in which he aspired to personal wealth of $1 billion and called the nonprofit commitment "a lie," suggest that the commercial trajectory was not an unfortunate necessity but an anticipated outcome. OpenAI's lawyers may successfully argue that journal entries are not corporate plans. But the jury will have to reconcile Brockman's private words with his public role, and that reconciliation will be the central drama of the trial's second week. Musk tried to settle. Brockman suggested terms that would have let him keep his job. Musk threatened to destroy their reputations instead. Now Brockman takes the stand, and his own handwriting will be projected on the courtroom screen. The trial that both men could have avoided will be decided by nine jurors reading a journal that was never meant to be read by anyone. The verdict, expected by mid-May, will determine whether OpenAI's leaders converted a charity into an empire, or whether they built something that outgrew the structure it was born in. Brockman's journals suggest he knew which it was going to be. He wrote it down.

Everything You Missed From Elon Musk's Testimony in the OpenAI Trial

Elon Musk "speaks" publicly a lot (the guy is *always* tweeting), but rarely does he do it when he's not in control of the message. On X, he can manipulate the algorithm to boost himself and friendly replies. On the rare occasion that he sits down for media appearances anymore, it's usually a controlled environment with a friendly interviewer. When the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX took the witness stand for his trial against Sam Altman and OpenAI, he very quickly found himself in unfamiliar territory. It made for quite the show, per the reporters who were there and watched Musk get testy with opposing counsel on cross-examination. But it also produced quite a few notable bits of informationâ€"juicy history between Musk and other big tech execs in the Valley, new details about his home life and romantic entanglements, and details about his businesses that paint a different picture than the one he's offered publicly. In case you missed it (or just prefer to tune out Musk as often as possible), here are some of the most interesting bits from Musk's time on the stand. The lawsuit that Musk is bringing against Sam Altman and OpenAI hinges heavily on the startup's origins. Musk holds that OpenAI was always supposed to be a nonprofit dedicated to improving humanity through the development of AI and not the for-profit entity that it has become. While on the stand, he talked often about OpenAI being a "charity" and how he basically got tricked into giving it seed funding to become an AI giant. "It was specifically meant to â€"be for a charity that does not benefit any individual person. I could've started it as a for-profit, and I specifically chose not to," Musk testified, per Reuters. He also said in his opening statement, "I gave them $38 million of essentially free funding, which they then used to create an $800 billion for-profit company. I literally was a fool." Musk posited that allowing OpenAI to continue to operate as a for-profit company rather than forcing it back to its nonprofit origins could upend philanthropy entirely. “If we make it okay to loot a charity, the entire foundation of charitable giving in America will be destroyed. That’s my concern,†Musk said in initial remarks. (Note that Musk himself doesn't really give all that much, but you know, for the people who do, that's a big deal.) Musk left OpenAI in 2018. He didn't sue the organization for allegedly abandoning its original purpose until 2024. So, what gives? According to Musk, he didn't realize what was happening until 2022, when Microsoft announced that it was making a $10 billion investment in the AI lab. "Microsoft would only put $10 billion, which is a huge sum of money, into something if they feel like they will get a return," Musk explained while on the stand, per Business Insider. "There's no way Microsoft is just giving that as a donation or any kind of charitable way. That's an amount of money that doesn't make any sense." "I texted Sam Altman and said, 'What the hell is going on?' â€" something to that effect," Musk told the court. "I think I said, 'This is a bait and switch.'" Presumably, Altman responded, "New phone, who dis?" It's well known at this point that Elon Musk has a lot of baby mamas, many of whom he seems to see in court more often than in life. But Shivon Zilis, the mother of four of his children, likely sees Musk pretty regularly. Per an account of the CEO's testimony provided by Wired, Zilis lives with himâ€"though he didn't put a label on their relationship. Well, unless you count calling her "chief of staff" or "close advisor." Not exactly romantic, but to each their own. The Musk-Zilis relationship is not made any less complicated by her role at OpenAI. She was brought on as an advisor at the organization in 2016, and started getting romantic with Musk after the fact. When Musk left OpenAI, she stayed onâ€"and seemingly offered to serve as a spy for her partner. In a text sent to Musk shortly before he left OpenAI, Zilis asked, “Do you prefer I stay close and friendly to OpenAI to keep info flowing or begin to disassociate? Trust game is about to get tricky, so any guidance for how to do right by you is appreciated." Musk responded, “Close and friendly, but we are going to actively try to move three or four people from OpenAI to Tesla. More than that will join over time, but we won’t actively recruit them.†Part of Musk's case against OpenAI relates to what he claims is a key purpose for starting the organization: ensuring that AI is developed safely. While the judge in the case insisted that they wouldn't litigate whether AI presents an existential risk to humanity, that didn't stop Musk from slipping in references to pop-culture apocalypses brought about by the technology. “If we build the robots,†Musk told the court on Wednesday, per The Ringer, “I can make sure that they’re safe, and we don’t have a Terminator future situation.†He brought up the film multiple times while on the stand, though he never really expanded on the idea other than that it would be bad if that happened. “It could also kill all of us â€| the Terminator outcome," he said, according to Wired. "I think we want to be in a movie â€| like Star Trek, not a James Cameron movie." Presumably, that would also include the Avatar extended universe. While testifying, Musk was presented with some of the language that he's directed at employees, including reportedly calling the OpenAI safety team "jackasses." In response, Musk insisted, according to The Verge, “I don’t lose my temper,†and “I don’t yell at people.†Wanna guess how well that held up? It reportedly only took a few more exchanges with OpenAI's counsel, who seemed to be intentionally needling Musk, for him to completely undermine that premise. After getting questioned about whether or not he read a 2018 document from OpenAI regarding the formation of a for-profit arm, Musk lost his temper. “I said I didn’t look closely! I read the headline!†he said, raising his voice.

Elon Musk threatened to make OpenAI's Sam Altman and Greg Brockman 'the most hated men in America'

Elon Musk threatened to make OpenAI's Sam Altman and Greg Brockman "the most hated men in America" after they rebuffed the billionaire's overtures for eleventh-hour settlement talks in his case against the AI lab. Musk sent a text to Brockman, OpenAI's president, on April 25, during the weekend before the trial began last Monday, to "gauge interest in settlement", according to a filing by OpenAI's lawyers in the case being heard in federal court in Oakland, California. After Brockman suggested each side drop its claims, according to the filing, Musk replied by text: "By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be." The direct exchange between two of the central figures in the trial, which entered its second week on Monday, underscores the personal enmity between the former associates who co-founded OpenAI before becoming rivals. Musk's lawyers have yet to respond to the filing. On Monday, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers denied OpenAI's request to question Brockman about the message when he takes the stand. She criticised the start-up's lawyers for trying to introduce it through a "backdoor" and said they should have asked Musk about the message when he appeared last week. Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI seeks to unwind the $852bn start-up's transition from a non-profit into a for-profit company and oust co-founders Altman and Brockman. The world's richest man claims OpenAI sold out its charitable mission after he donated money to help launch the AI lab. If he prevails, OpenAI's ambitions for a trillion-dollar initial public offering this year could be derailed. Microsoft -- which owns a 27 per cent stake worth $135bn -- is also accused of "aiding and abetting" the start-up's conduct. The defendants deny all claims. Last week, Musk repeatedly accused Altman and Brockman of conspiring to "steal a charity" that he co-founded in 2015 with "bait and switch" tactics. OpenAI countered by showing emails from September 2017 about creating a for-profit entity to help raise more funds to pay for recruitment and computing power. Musk would have owned 55 per cent of the equity, while Altman, Brockman and another co-founder, Ilya Sutskever, were to receive 7.5 per cent. When his colleagues opposed the structure, Musk became frustrated and pulled his monthly donations, sending an email that read: "Guys I've had enough . . . Either go do something on your own or continue with OpenAI as a non-profit." OpenAI's lawyers also pointed to Musk starting his own private, for-profit AI company, xAI, to compete with them. They alleged that his lawsuit was filed mainly to slow down and tarnish a rival. Brockman is expected to face questions on Monday about the meaning of several potentially embarrassing excerpts from his personal journal that were uncovered during pre-trial discovery. "[I] can't see us turning this into a for-profit without a nasty fight," one entry read. "[Musk's] story will correctly be that we weren't honest with him in the end about still wanting to do for profit just without him." "This is the only chance we have to get out from Elon," Brockman wrote in another entry. "Making the money for us sounds great and all" and "Financially, what will take me to $1bn?" In testimony last week, Musk talked down OpenAI, saying its fierce rival Anthropic was "number one" in AI at the moment. He also admitted that xAI had "distilled" ChatGPT to help improve its own chatbot, Grok, which performs worse on model leader boards and generates comparatively little revenue.

OpenAI co-founder discloses nearly $30 billion stake, financial ties to Altman

OAKLAND, California, May 4 (Reuters) - OpenAI's co-founder and president, Greg Brockman, on Monday disclosed deeper financial ties to CEO Sam Altman than previously known as well as a stake in the ChatGPT maker worth almost $30 billion. The details were shared in court during questioning by a lawyer for Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI and is now suing the company on grounds that it improperly became a for-profit company, abandoned charitable goals and should turn back into a nonprofit. Musk's team said that Brockman's independence was potentially compromised by financial incentives that led him to support Altman, the driver behind OpenAI's reinvention as a for-profit company. Brockman also disclosed in court that he holds stakes in two startups backed by Altman as well as a percentage of Altman's family fund. The trial, in its second week in a California courtroom, could determine the future of OpenAI, which sparked a widespread ⁠craze over generative artificial intelligence after launching its ChatGPT chatbot in late 2022. Since then, OpenAI has raised well over $100 billion from investors to hire researchers, buy computing power and expand the company ahead of a potential trillion-dollar IPO. Musk is seeking the ouster of Altman and Brockman from leadership as well as $150 billion in damages. Brockman early in his testimony agreed that his stake in OpenAI was worth close to $30 billion, a figure not previously known. In 2017, Altman gave Brockman a stake in Altman's family office that was worth $10 million at the time. That same year, Brockman, Musk and other OpenAI executives discussed restructuring OpenAI as a for-profit so the organization could pay for the pricey computing power required to train AI systems. 2017 COMPENSATION ARRANGEMENT Brockman said he did not discuss his compensation directly with Musk. Emails read out in court showed that Altman mentioned the arrangement during a separate conversation with Jared Birchall, Musk's head of family office, who relayed the details to Musk. "One thing worth mentioning now is that he compensated Greg on the ⁠side by giving him a percentage ownership of Sam's personal family office," Birchall wrote in the email, adding the deal could mean that "Greg is going to have a greater allegiance to Sam as a result of this arrangement." Musk forwarded Birchall's note to Brockman with two question marks. When pressed on whether he was loyal to Altman, Brockman said, "I don't know I would say it quite like that." STAKES IN ALTMAN-BACKED STARTUPS On Monday, Brockman disclosed that he owned shares of AI chip startup Cerebras, including during various moments when OpenAI discussed buying the chipmaker. This year, OpenAI ⁠has said it will spend a significant amount of money to buy Cerebras chips. Brockman also said he has a stake in Helion Energy, a fusion startup in which Altman has already invested hundreds of millions of dollars. In March, Altman stepped down from Helion's board because the two companies were looking to work together. Musk, the world's richest person, alleges OpenAI, Altman and Brockman secured his $38 ⁠million in donations and personal help by promising to build a nonprofit that would prioritize safe development of AI, before pivoting to create a for-profit entity to enrich themselves. His charges include breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment. OpenAI has said that Musk, the CEO of Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab and SpaceX, is driven by a compulsion to control OpenAI ⁠and is bitter about the company's success after he left its board in 2018. It has also said Musk did not prioritize safety issues while with the company, and that he is trying to bolster his own AI company, SpaceX unit xAI, which lags OpenAI in user adoption. Reporting by Deepa Seetharaman in Oakland, California, and Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Peter Henderson and Matthew Lewis Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Musk texted OpenAI's Brockman about settlement two days before trial began

Two days before Elon Musk's multi-billion-dollar lawsuit against OpenAI was slated to head to trial, Musk texted the company's president, Greg Brockman, to gauge his interest in a settlement, according to a filing late on Sunday. "When Mr. Brockman responded with a suggestion that both sides drop their respective claims, Mr. Musk shot back: 'By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be,'" the filing says. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015, sued the company, Brockman and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in 2024, alleging they went back on their commitment to keep the artificial intelligence company a nonprofit and to follow its charitable mission. Trial proceedings kicked off late last month in federal court in Oakland, California, and Brockman could be called to testify as soon as Monday. OpenAI's lawyers moved to enter Musk's text into evidence and suggested they plan to bring it up while Brockman is on the stand. "It tends to prove motive and bias, and, in particular, that Mr. Musk's motivation in pursuing this lawsuit is to attack a competitor and its principals," the lawyers wrote in the filing.

Elon Musk Wanted OpenAI to Go Commercial, Greg Brockman Testifies

In the summer of 2017, OpenAI built an artificial intelligence system that could play a popular video game called Defense of the Ancients, known as Dota. Inside a stadium in Seattle with more than 20,000 spectators, this A.I. system won an international Dota tournament, beating many of the world's best players. When OpenAI's president, Greg Brockman, emailed Elon Musk about the win, the tech mogul was elated. "Time to make the next step for OpenAI. This is the triggering event," said Mr. Musk, who was backing OpenAI financially. The next day, Mr. Brockman met Mr. Musk and his chief of staff, Shivon Zilis, and several others at a party house Mr. Musk had recently purchased just south of the city. There, they began discussing ways of transforming OpenAI into a for-profit company, according to testimony by Mr. Brockman and other evidence presented on Tuesday in the blockbuster trial that pits Mr. Musk against the maker of ChatGPT. Mr. Musk has sued OpenAI, accusing Mr. Brockman and its chief executive, Sam Altman, of breaching the A.I. lab's founding contract by putting commercial gain over the public good. He is asking for $150 billion in damages and a court order that would unwind the for-profit company that OpenAI created last year. He also wants an order removing Mr. Altman from the OpenAI board of directors. Mr. Musk founded OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015 alongside Mr. Brockman, Mr. Altman and a group of A.I. researchers, before leaving the organization. Mr. Altman and the other founders then attached a for-profit company to the A.I. lab and began raising billions of dollars from the tech giant Microsoft and other investors. With these commercial efforts, Mr. Musk argues, OpenAI has abandoned the original mission of the nonprofit. But during his second day of testimony, Mr. Brockman described how Mr. Musk spent several months in 2017 working with the other OpenAI founders to turn the operation into a for-profit company. Under questioning from Sarah Eddy, one of OpenAI's lawyers, Mr. Brockman read a 2017 text he sent to Ms. Zilis in which he detailed a meeting he had with Mr. Musk that July. "He said nonprofit was def the right one early on, may not be the right one now," the text read, referring to Mr. Musk. Mr. Brockman also detailed a meeting in August 2017 when he and another OpenAI co-founder, Ilya Sutskever, discussed a possible for-profit company with Mr. Musk. Mr. Musk had recently given Tesla electric cars to the other founders of OpenAI. To show his gratitude, Dr. Sutskever brought Mr. Musk a painting he had made of a Tesla. During the meeting, Mr. Brockman and Dr. Sutskever said they would not agree to give Mr. Musk full control over the proposed for-profit, Mr. Brockman said from the stand. Mr. Musk then paused to think for several moments, before standing up, walking around the table and moving in Mr. Brockman's direction. "I thought we was going to hit me. I thought he was going to physically attack me," Mr. Brockman told the court. Before storming out of the room, Mr. Brockman said, Mr. Musk told them: "When will you be departing OpenAI? I will withhold funding until you decide what you are going to do." When Mr. Musk's lead counsel, Steven Molo, began another round of questions for Mr. Brockman, he showed a email from later in 2017 in which Mr. Musk said he "would unequivocally have initial control" of the proposed for-profit company "but this will change quickly." Mr. Molo then suggested to Mr. Brockman that he did not have the business sense to understand that Mr. Musk did not want total control of the company, Mr. Brockman pushed back at the characterization. The two sparred for several minutes, with Mr. Molo pointedly raising his voice and Mr. Brockman responding firmly but calmly. When Mr. Brockman began his testimony on Monday, Mr. Musk's lawyers challenged his credibility and tried to show that he was driven by greed. He continued to say that he was primarily motivated by OpenAI's original mission to build A.I. for the good of humanity. After Mr. Brockman finished his testimony on Tuesday, Mr. Musk's legal team showed part of a video deposition by OpenAI's deputy general counsel, Robert Wu, in which he detailed the agreement from 2019 in which OpenAI created its first for-profit company. This was a "capped profit" company that limited the profits shared with its investors. Mr. Wu said that the OpenAI nonprofit transferred employees and intellectual property to the capped profit company and retained few employees of its own. He then explained that Microsoft invested a total of $13 billion in the capped profit company. In the deposition, Mr. Wu also explained that the nonprofit would not have received any funds from the venture until Microsoft and other partners received more than $250 billion in compensation. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied the suit's claims.)

Musk's case against OpenAI lands roughly in its first week

Three days of cross-examination in Oakland produced a $130bn lawsuit's most awkward admissions, including that xAI trains on OpenAI's models. The judge, not the jury, will decide. Elon Musk took the stand in Oakland on Tuesday with a story he has been telling for two years. He had founded OpenAI in 2015, he said, to keep advanced artificial intelligence out of the hands of any single company. Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, his former collaborators, had then quietly turned the lab into a for-profit empire, taken billions from Microsoft, and shut him out. The lawsuit he filed in 2024 was, in his framing, a corrective: a bid to restore the original nonprofit and recover what he says was stolen. Three days later, that story looked considerably more contested than it had on Monday. Musk's case had hit "some rough spots." Musk's own admissions on cross-examination, the judge's repeated warnings about the scope of the dispute, and a series of pre-trial rulings narrowing the legal claims have all combined to make the world's richest man's case against the most valuable AI company in the world look, at least at this stage, harder to win than its initial framing implied. The trial opened on 28 April in the federal courthouse in Oakland, before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. A nine-person jury was seated the day before. Musk, his lawyers, OpenAI, Altman, Brockman, and Microsoft are all in the suit. The headline damages figure is more than $130bn, though some early coverage has cited $150bn; either way the structural remedies Musk is seeking, including a partial unwinding of OpenAI's for-profit conversion, are arguably the more consequential ask. The procedural setup is unusual. Although a jury has been impanelled, its verdict is advisory only. Judge Gonzalez Rogers will make the final decision on liability and on remedy, and is expected to rule by mid-May. The trial is therefore less a contest for the jury's hearts and minds than a long, public deposition in front of the judge, who has already pruned the case before it began. She dismissed Musk's fraud claims pre-trial and warned both sides. Musk was the first witness. He spent parts of three days on the stand, first under questioning from his own counsel, then under sustained cross-examination by William Savitt, OpenAI's lead lawyer. The first awkward moment came on the question of nonprofit commitment, the theory at the heart of the case. Savitt produced internal documents and contemporaneous communications that, in his framing, showed Musk had pushed in 2017 and 2018 for OpenAI to convert into a for-profit under his control, and had walked away from the project when that did not happen. " You were never committed to OpenAI being a nonprofit," Savitt put to him, in an exchange. Musk disputed the characterisation but conceded the documents. The second awkward moment, audible from the gallery, was Musk's acknowledgement that xAI, his own AI company and the maker of the chatbot Grok, distils on OpenAI's models, in effect training on the outputs of the very system he says was wrongly converted to private gain. The third was procedural. Savitt argued that Musk had waited too long to sue, and that key claims were filed after the relevant statute of limitations expired. Whether the judge accepts that defence is a separate question, but the timeline becomes part of the record either way. Even before opening statements, Judge Gonzalez Rogers had reshaped the case. Her pre-trial rulings dropped Musk's fraud claims and confined the trial to the narrower question of whether OpenAI breached charitable-trust and contract obligations when it restructured. That makes the case less dramatic in framing, but easier to litigate, and arguably harder for Musk to win on his original theory of grand betrayal. On day three, Gonzalez Rogers cautioned the lawyers against treating the proceedings as a referendum on AI safety or on Altman's character. Both sides have been prone to the slippage. Musk, on the stand, repeated long-running arguments that AI poses existential risk, an answer the judge appeared to find tangential to the legal question of whether OpenAI's directors breached their fiduciary duties. The trial is expected to run another two to three weeks. Altman is set to testify, as are Brockman, Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella, and several of OpenAI's earliest engineers. Musk's expert witnesses, according to court documents, include the Berkeley AI researcher Stuart Russell and the Columbia Law School tax-and-nonprofit specialist David Schizer. OpenAI is expected to call its own roster of governance and AI-safety experts, with Axios reporting that the defendants intend to put Grok's own safety record in front of the jury. Musk may yet recover ground. Cross-examinations of his founding partners could produce admissions of their own; the documentary record, which neither side disputes runs into thousands of pages, is broad enough to support more than one reading. The judge, not the jury, will decide, and her record so far suggests a willingness to rule on the merits rather than the theatrics. But the first week, judged on its own, did not go well for the plaintiff. A case that began as a story about a betrayed mission has become, in places, a case about a litigant whose own conduct is now part of the evidence. If that complicates the verdict or simply colours the coverage is something only Judge Gonzalez Rogers will settle, sometime in the next few weeks.

Under-Oath Elon Musk Seems to Run a Different Company Than Public-Figure Elon Musk

Elon Musk has spent much of this week on the witness stand in federal court as part of his lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, over the company's decision to ditch its nonprofit status. That means he's been talking a lot and, for once, has someone there to immediately call him on his shit. The result gives us a much different picture of Musk's companies than the rosy image that he usually paints. For instance, Musk has repeatedly claimed that his companies will achieve artificial general intelligence, essentially a human-level ability to reason and operate autonomously. He claimed the breakthrough would come in 2025 (it didn't), then posited that his company, xAI, could achieve it before the end of 2026 (it won't). He also said last month that Tesla would be “one of the companies to make AGI" through its efforts to develop its humanoid robot Optimus, last seen falling over while being teleoperated by a human. It turns out the singularity might not actually be right around the corner. According to the New York Times, Musk said on the stand during cross-examination that Tesla has no plans to pursue AGI. Curious if the company's shareholders would be interested to know, given that the company announced during its last earnings call that it'll spend $25 billion on capital expenditures in 2026, primarily on AI-related projects. That's not the only divergence to show up in Musk's testimony. You might remember Musk admonishing Anthropic earlier this year for stealing the data used to train its AI models, including Claude. The world's richest man laid into his AI rival after Anthropic complained that Chinese tech firms were engaged in "distillation attacks," essentially a technique of using a more powerful model to train a smaller, cheaper one to compete with less data and processing power. Turns out, Musk doesn't seem to really object to distillation or training data theft. When asked while on the stand whether xAI has ever distilled technology from OpenAI, per NYT, Musk answered, “Generally, AI companies distill other AI companies." Asked "Is that a 'yes,'" as to whether that means xAI has distilled from its rival, Musk said, "Partly." The Verge noted that Musk explained, "It is standard practice to use other AIs to validate your AI.†It'd be nice if Musk had to send his tweets while under oath. Seems like we'd get a much different, if more honest, picture of how his businesses operate.

OpenAI president's 'deeply personal' diary becomes focus in Musk's case against Altman

Greg Brockman has faced questions about his emails, texts and writings in his personal diary in second week of the trial As Elon Musk's case against OpenAI entered its second week, focus shifted to the company's president, Greg Brockman. Over the course of several hours on Monday and Tuesday, Brockman faced questions about his emails, texts and one piece of evidence that has become central to the trial: his personal diary. Musk's lawsuit revolves around his allegation that Brockman, OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, violated the founding agreement of the artificial intelligence firm by turning it into a for-profit entity. Musk argues that Altman and Brockman also unjustly enriched themselves in the process, essentially taking Musk's money while deceiving him about their true intent for the business. He is seeking Altman and Brockman's removal, the undoing of the for-profit restructuring and $134bn, which Musk wants distributed to OpenAI's non-profit. The journal, which Brockman kept during the company's founding years circa 2015, has provided a consistent line of attack for Musk's attorneys in the lead-up to the trial and during Brockman's time on the witness stand. Musk's team has presented numerous embarrassing excerpts, which OpenAI argues are taken out of context, to portray Brockman as self-interested and deceptive. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers cited Brockman's entries multiple times in her decision to deny the AI firm's motion to prevent the case from going to trial. "Financially what will take me to $1B?" Brockman wrote in one entry in which he asked himself what he "really wants". During Brockman's pre-trial deposition, Musk's attorney brought up the journal a half-dozen times and asked why Brockman wrote "it would be nice to be making the billions". Brockman responded that he meant it would be nice to have a revenue plan for the company outside donations. "It'd be wrong to steal the non-profit from him. to convert to a b-corp without him. that'd be pretty morally bankrupt. and he's really not an idiot," Brockman wrote in another entry, which considered Musk's role in the company. Musk's lead attorney, Steven Molo, called Brockman to testify on Monday and questioned what he meant by several of his entries, specifically asking about the line that Musk was "really not an idiot". "Did you mean to say that only an idiot would allow you to steal a charity?" Molo asked. "No," Brockman responded. During a series of tense exchanges, Musk's attorney also repeatedly read out portions of Brockman's journal to the court and accused him of deceiving Musk. "You weren't honest with Elon Musk when you told him that you wanted OpenAI to remain a non-profit, were you?" Molo asked. "We were absolutely honest with Elon," Brockman responded. OpenAI has denied all of Musk's claims, stating that the Tesla CEO is merely an aggrieved former co-founder who left the company in 2018 after a failed bid to take control. They argue that Musk was always aware of the intent to create a for-profit structure and that OpenAI is still overseen by a non-profit that seeks to benefit humanity through AI. OpenAI published a blogpost in January, titled "the truth Elon left out", that attempted to show Musk's team misused quotes and cut out relevant sections. Brockman meanwhile posted a lengthy thread on X on the same day as OpenAI's blog, which gave his explanation of his diary entries. "I have great respect for Elon, but the way he cherrypicked from my personal journal is beyond dishonest," Brockman said on X, stating that he was looking forward to being able to tell his full version of events. Musk's case against OpenAI, Altman and Brockman isn't the only lawsuit where the diary has drawn interest. In March, a federal judge ruled that OpenAI must give portions of Brockman's journal to the New York Times and other plaintiffs in a case that accuses the AI firm of copyright infringement and illegally using newspapers' intellectual property to train their AI models. OpenAI's lawyers began their cross-examination of Brockman on Monday afternoon and carried on into Tuesday, giving him a chance to reframe some of Musk's accusations and reiterate his claim that he never deceived the world's richest man. When asked about the diary, he downplayed its role as a record of events and referred to it as stream of consciousness writing that he never thought would be public. "It's very painful," Brockman said. "It's very deeply personal writings that weren't meant for the world to see but there's nothing in there that I'm ashamed of."

Elon Musk on the witness stand: here's what he said about OpenAI

Credit: Jessica Christian/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images The Elon Musk-Sam Altman courtroom showdown already promised plenty of fireworks. And in its first week, dominated by the world's richest man taking the stand in a federal courthouse in Oakland, Calif., Musk v. Altman delivered more than a few whizz-bangs. Musk's goals on the witness stand were to explain his OpenAI lawsuit under friendly questioning from his own lawyer, and to not look too arrogant or ignorant under questioning from counsel for the OpenAI executives he's suing. Whether he succeeded in either sense is open to question -- in part because Musk himself did not seem very open to questions. But Musk certainly succeeded in making more people aware of his ongoing romantic coparent relationship with his former chief of staff, and making many of us scratch our heads about what, exactly, the popular online acronym "TL;DR" stands for. So let's dive in to our own TL;DR: highlights from the Musk testimony we followed so you don't have to. If you're Elon Musk, and you're trying to explain a spat between yourself and other billionaires over OpenAI's nonprofit status to a jury of nine Oaklanders who may or may not give a hoot about Silicon Valley, how do you frame it? Simple, apparently: you paint yourself as the savior of all charitable trusts, not just the one behind OpenAI. "The consequences of this case go far beyond me," Musk told his attorney Steve Molo after he took the stand on Tuesday. If OpenAI wins, Musk said, it will establish a precedent that will give "license to looting every charity ... the entire foundation of charitable giving in America will be destroyed." (Not mentioned: the fact that Musk's own charity has failed to give away enough money to qualify for charitable status, consistently, for the past five years.) And if you find that outcome too hyperbolic, just wait till you hear Musk's other repeated claim: that in bringing a suit over the 2019 change of OpenAI's nonprofit status, he is "saving humanity" from AI that "could kill us all." Musk specifically and repeatedly invoked the Terminator movies, evidently hoping the jury would draw a connection from ChatGPT to the entirely fictional Skynet. Musk's telling of the OpenAI story dominated Tuesday, the first full day after jury selection. But it was also the day he had to sit through the opening argument for Altman et al., which painted a pretty clear picture of him as well. "We are here because Musk didn't get his way at OpenAI," OpenAI lead counsel William Savitt said. "My clients had the nerve to go on and succeed without him. Mr. Musk did not like that." Savitt noted Musk made no complaint when Microsoft invested in OpenAI in 2019. It was after ChatGPT's success, starting in 2022 but really ramping up in 2023, that "the sour grapes kicked in," Savitt said. Under Savitt's questioning on Thursday, Musk said he was fine with Microsoft's $1 billion investment in 2019, but not its $10 million investment in 2022. "This is a bait and switch," is how he described his thinking at the time. The judge had already ruled that Musk could get a fair trial even if jurors said they didn't particularly like him personally, given that it's impossible in the Bay Area to find anyone who doesn't know about him. So there's definitely an audience among those nine for what Savitt is laying down here. Especially when Savitt took time on Wednesday to remind jurors in this deeply Democratic town of Musk's employment by Donald Trump. Under favorable questioning Tuesday, Musk identified Shivon Zillis -- a key player in the early days of OpenAI -- as his "chief of staff." Multiple laughs came from the public gallery, presumably from those who knew that Zilis also happens to be the mother of Musk's children, or at least four out of 14. Asked again about Zilis by his lawyer on Wednesday, Musk came clean: "We live together and she's the mother of four of my children." Despite this shiftiness about a relationship he already admitted in his deposition was a romantic one, Musk insisted that he didn't recall Zilis ever sharing "sensitive" information about OpenAI after he departed the company in 2019. Asked by his lawyer to explain the acronym TL;DR, which cropped up in a court document, Musk said it stands for "Too Long, Don't Read." As any dictionary will tell you, however, it's actually Too Long Didn't Read. That may just have been a trivial mistake, but for the fact that Musk appears to have used his version to apply to court documents themselves. On Wednesday, Savitt hammered away at Musk for saying he'd only read the first paragraph of a key OpenAI document. On Thursday, the OpenAI counsel played a segment of Musk's 2025 deposition in which he'd claimed to have read the whole thing. TL;DR: OpenAI is doing a fairly good job of establishing that Musk's statements about reading or not reading, at least, are untrustworthy. Whomever else Musk may be convincing with his testimony, he and his lawyer didn't help their position with Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, a veteran of big tech trials. Multiple times on Wednesday, Gonzalez Rogers berated Molo, Musk's counsel, for leading the witness. "You should have read it," she fired back at Musk and counsel on his TL;DR approach to trial documents. And she noted to the jury that Musk was "at times difficult" under OpenAI's cross-examination. If anything, that's understating the matter. Musk was visibly furious at Savitt for asking "yes or no" questions, a fairly typical courtroom concept. He said they were "designed to trick me," and called Savitt's claim that they were "simple questions" an outright "lie." Musk drew a connection between Savitt's simple yes or no questions and the classic example of a loaded question, "when did you stop beating your wife?" Gonzalez Rogers shut Musk down on that one: "we're not going there," she said. Just once, Savitt apologized for what he said "wasn't a fair question." Before he could reframe it, Musk had some petulant commentary: "I find it funny you saying it wasn't a fair question, since you're only asking unfair questions." Most attorneys in Molo's position would advise their clients to tone it down after a day like that on the witness stand. Whether Molo did or not, Musk was at it again Thursday, the final day of his testimony (although OpenAI reserves the right to call him back later in the trial). Echoing the judge's admonishment of his own lawyer, Musk repeatedly claimed Savitt was leading the witness. That is, however, something that only applies to friendly questioning, as Gonzalez Rogers pointed out. "That's not how it works," the judge told the world's richest man, before dropping the mic: "Let's remind everyone in the courtroom that you're not a lawyer." But Musk simply couldn't avoid having the last word, telling the jury that "I did take Law 101 in school." As any Law 101 professor could tell Musk, however, he should be glad to be off the witness stand before he made his case any worse for himself.

Musk sought settlement with OpenAI before Oakland trial, filing shows

May 4 (Reuters) - Elon Musk contacted OpenAI President Greg Brockman to gauge interest in a settlement two days before their high-stakes trial got underway in Oakland federal court, according to a new court filing. When Brockman suggested both sides drop their claims, Musk allegedly said, "By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will ⁠be," the filing, made on Sunday, stated. The exchange is the latest flashpoint in a lawsuit that has already grown combative inside the courtroom. The SpaceX founder testified on Thursday that he did not read the fine print of a 2017 term sheet related to OpenAI's shift from a nonprofit to a for-profit structure, only its headline. Musk is suing OpenAI alleging that its shift to a for-profit structure betrayed its ⁠original nonprofit mission to develop safe AI technology for the public good and that the company's leaders wrongfully profited from his charitable contributions. The SpaceX founder is seeking changes to OpenAI's leadership and $150 billion in damages ⁠from OpenAI and Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab, one of its largest investors. The trial before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, began on April 28 and is ⁠expected to last several weeks, with a verdict possible by mid-May. Altman, Brockman and Microsoft chief Satya Nadella are expected to testify ⁠later this month. Musk, his lawyer, and OpenAI did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment. Reporting by Anhata Rooprai in Bengaluru and Deepa Seetharaman in Oakland, California; Editing by Anil D'Silva Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Artificial Intelligence * ADAS, AV & Safety * Software-Defined Vehicle * Sustainable & EV Supply Chain

Elon Musk gets testy on the stand: 'I thought I had started a nonprofit with OpenAI but they stole it' | Fortune

Elon Musk on Thursday sparred with an attorney for OpenAI during his third day of testimony in the contentious trial over the company's pivot from nonprofit status to a for-profit venture valued at hundreds of billions of dollars. The trial centers on the 2015 birth of the ChatGPT maker as a nonprofit startup primarily funded by Musk. It pits the world's richest person against Sam Altman, a fellow OpenAI co-founder he accuses of betraying promises to keep the company as a nonprofit dedicated to humanity's benefit. Tempers have flared on both sides of the high-stakes trial, as the morning began with an existential discussion about the future of humanity -- complete with references to "The Terminator" movies -- and how much witness testimony would focus on AI safety. "Your client, despite these risks, is creating a company that is in the exact same space," Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers told Musk's lawyers, referring to the billionaire's xAI, which launched in 2023. People, she said, "don't want to put the future of humanity into Mr. Musk's hands," and instructed the parties not to discuss the dangers of AI to humanity during the course of the trial. "This is not a trial on the safety risks of artificial intelligence. This is not a trial on whether or not AI has damaged humanity," she said. "It could be one day in a federal court in this country that we may have that trial. That is not this trial and we are not going to get sidetracked on that issue in this trial." On the stand, Musk has taken issue with the cross-examination by opposing attorney William Savitt, accusing him of asking misleading questions designed to trick him and the jury. At one point Thursday, Savitt asked Musk about earlier testimony where he said that as long as investor profits were capped, OpenAI wasn't in violation of agreements to keep it a nonprofit. "It depends on how high the cap is," Musk replied. Savitt then said that "wasn't your complete answer yesterday right?" In response, Musk said "few answers are going to be complete, especially if you cut me off all the time." He added that if the cap is "super high," then OpenAI is "really a for-profit at that point." Lawyers for OpenAI have rejected the allegations brought in Musk's civil lawsuit and said there were never promises that the company would remain a nonprofit forever. The company has argued Musk's legal challenge is aimed at undercutting OpenAI's rapid growth and bolstering Musk's xAI, which he launched in 2023 as a competitor. The trial in federal court in Oakland, California, is scheduled to continue through late May. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers excused Musk from the witness stand Thursday, but he may be called back later. During the cross-examination, Savitt also asked Musk about his companies -- Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and X -- and whether they were all for-profit. Musk replied yes, and affirmed that he believes all of these companies are "socially beneficial." Savitt then asked why Musk hasn't started a nonprofit himself, eight years after he left OpenAI. "I thought I had started a nonprofit with OpenAI but they stole it," Musk replied, adding that this is "the entire basis of this lawsuit."

Elon Musk Just Got Badly Humiliated in Court

Can't-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Elon Musk helped birth OpenAI in 2015, a world-changing AI non-profit which he lavished with tens of millions of dollars alongside its now-CEO Sam Altman. Now in 2026, he's suing to unwind the entire project with a civil suit, claiming that Altman betrayed the nonprofit's mission by turning it into a profit-seeking machine -- nevermind the fact that Musk also runs his own for-profit AI company, xAI. The civil trial, taking place in San Francisco, pits two of tech's most powerful egos against each other in a duel for control over the broader AI ecosystem. That being the case, it's already devolved into a circus just days into the case, with the erratic Musk emerging as a key liability in his own proceedings. During day three of the trial, Elon Musk struggled to present a confident front, which led to a number of unforced errors. One of his major blunders came when the billionaire claimed that "Tesla is not pursuing AGI," or artificial general intelligence, the north star for American AI developers broadly defined as the point at which AI reaches human-level intelligence. That might seem like a no-brainer -- Tesla is an electric vehicle company, after all -- but it stands in direct contradiction to Musk's own comments not even two months earlier. "Tesla will be one of the companies to make AGI and probably the first to make it in humanoid/atom-shaping form," Musk wrote on X-formerly-Twitter as recently as March 4, 2026. That comment was even entered as an exhibit in the court case, officially enshrining Musk's lies into the judicial record. The blunders didn't stop there. At one point, Musk was asked if he was romantically involved with the Canadian venture capitalist Shivon Zilis, with whom the billionaire shares four kids. "I think so," Musk replied on the witness stand. Later, Musk admitted that he "did not read the fine print" of an OpenAI term sheet Altman had sent his way back in 2018, as the billionaire stepped away from the company's board. "It's a four-page document," the opposing lawyer retorted. As Hard Reset reporter Alex Shultz noted, Musk could have easily skimmed the document before he took the stand, but must have decided his time would be better spent elsewhere. It all paints a rather dithering picture of Musk, who can't be bothered to do even the bare minimum preparation for his lawsuit where the stakes are, in his attorney's words, the "good of humanity as a whole."

Musk sought settlement with OpenAI before Oakland trial, filing shows

Elon Musk contacted OpenAI President Greg Brockman to gauge interest in a settlement two days before their high-stakes trial got underway in Oakland federal court, according to a new court filing. When Brockman suggested both sides drop their claims, Musk allegedly said, "By the end of this week, you and Sam [Altman] will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be," the filing, made on Sunday, stated. The exchange is the latest flashpoint in a lawsuit that has already grown combative inside the courtroom. The SpaceX founder testified on Thursday that he did not read the fine print of a 2017 term sheet related to OpenAI's shift from a nonprofit to a for-profit structure, only its headline. Musk is suing OpenAI, alleging that its shift to a for-profit structure betrayed its original nonprofit mission to develop safe AI technology for the public good and that the company's leaders wrongfully profited from his charitable contributions. The SpaceX founder is seeking changes to OpenAI's leadership and $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, one of its largest investors. The trial before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, began on April 28 and is expected to last several weeks, with a verdict possible by mid-May. Altman, Brockman and Microsoft chief Satya Nadella are expected to testify later this month. Musk, his lawyer, and OpenAI did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment.

Elon Musk's Lawyers Ask OpenAI's Brockman Why He Is Worth $30 Billion

The legal team implied in a federal trial that Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president and co-founder, was driven by greed rather than building safe A.I. Two days before the start of the blockbuster trial pitting Elon Musk against the artificial intelligence company OpenAI, Mr. Musk sent a text message to Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president and co-founder, asking if he was interested in settling the case. When Mr. Brockman suggested both sides drop their claims, Mr. Musk responded with a text attacking Mr. Brockman and Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief executive. "By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be," he wrote, according to a document filed in the trial. As the trial's second week kicked off in an Oakland, Calif., federal courthouse on Monday, it was unclear if the public standing of Mr. Altman and Mr. Brockman had changed at all. But Mr. Brockman spent most of the day on the witness stand defending his credibility against suggestions that his A.I. work was driven by greed. Steven Molo, Mr. Musk's lead lawyer, showed evidence that while Mr. Brockman had never invested money in OpenAI, he now owned a stake worth about $30 billion. "Do you believe that OpenAI has maintained the moral high ground by allowing you to have a stake with close to $30 billion?" Mr. Molo asked. The question of OpenAI's motivations for building A.I. is a centerpiece of Mr. Musk's lawsuit against the company. He claims that Mr. Altman and others breached OpenAI's founding agreement by putting commercial gain over its earlier promise to build safe A.I. for the sake of humanity. He is asking for $150 billion in damages and a court order that would remove Mr. Altman from the OpenAI board of directors. He also wants an order unraveling the for-profit company structure that the company adopted last year. Mr. Musk helped create OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015 along with Mr. Altman, Mr. Brockman and a group of A.I. researchers. They vowed to freely share its technologies with the rest of the world. But Mr. Musk left the organization less than three years later after a power struggle. He later founded his own artificial intelligence start-up, xAI. OpenAI's legal team has argued that Mr. Musk's suit amounts to "sour grapes." Mr. Brockman, calmly responding to Mr. Molo's questions, said OpenAI had not veered from its original promise and that he was not driven primarily by money. "Solving for the mission has always been my primary motivation," he said, wearing a blue suit with his hair closely cropped, as always. "It remains so today." Mr. Molo showed an email that Mr. Brockman sent in 2015 to Yahoo's chief executive at the time, Marissa Mayer, as he and others were working on what would become OpenAI. In the email, Mr. Brockman said he was donating $100,000 to the new organization. But he did not end up making a donation. "Did you think it was morally bankrupt to say you would donate $100,000 and then not do that?" Mr. Molo asked. "No," Mr. Brockman responded. As Mr. Brockman testified, Mr. Altman listened intently, sitting behind the OpenAI legal team. Just behind him, Mr. Brockman's wife, Anna Brockman, sat on the edge of her seat, looking toward the stand. Mr. Molo repeatedly quoted from a journal that Mr. Brockman kept in 2017 and 2018 as OpenAI's co-founders realized the nonprofit could not raise the enormous amounts of money it would need. They discussed whether they should attach the lab to a for-profit company. As Mr. Brockman and others started to tussle with Mr. Musk over the future of the lab, he wrote, "This is the only chance we have to get out from Elon. Is he the 'glorious leader' that I would pick? We truly have a chance to make this happen. Financially, what will take me to $1B?" Mr. Molo repeatedly asked Mr. Brockman if this meant he was primarily interested in financial gain. Mr. Brockman said no, and that he was trying to decide whether to continue to build OpenAI with Mr. Musk or move it in a new direction. "There was a fork in the road," he said. "Do we accept Elon's terms?" Under questioning from Sarah Eddy, one of OpenAI's lawyers, Mr. Brockman said he never misled Mr. Musk about his intentions with OpenAI. He also said that as Mr. Musk was leaving OpenAI, he told Mr. Brockman that he intended to create a new effort to build artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., essentially a machine that can do anything the human brain can do. Mr. Musk said there had to be a serious competitor to Google in the race to A.G.I. and OpenAI wouldn't be able to do it. So he intended to build that competitor at Tesla, Mr. Brockman said. "As far as you know, has Tesla ever been a nonprofit?" Ms. Eddy asked. "No," Mr. Brockman said. He was expected to return to the witness stand on Tuesday. Before Mr. Brockman testified, the nine-member jury heard from Stuart Russell, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in A.I. safety. Dr. Russell said that dangers could emerge as commercial companies raced to build A.G.I. "Whichever company develops A.G.I. first would have a significant advantage that would then increase relative to the other companies," Dr. Russell said. "That company -- or a small handful of companies -- may control a majority of economic activity on the planet and governments would become subordinate to these companies." Mr. Musk's case was dealt a blow on Friday when Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who is presiding over the case, struck parts of the testimony of Jared Birchall, who manages Mr. Musk's family office. While being questioned by Mr. Musk's legal team on Thursday afternoon, Mr. Birchall discussed a $97.4 billion bid by Mr. Musk and others to purchase OpenAI's assets last year. He said he was concerned that Mr. Altman was inappropriately removing value from the OpenAI nonprofit as he and others created a new for-profit company in anticipation of a public offering. He accused Mr. Altman of "sitting on both sides of the negotiations" as those plans were made. But Judge Gonzalez Rogers ordered Mr. Birchall's discussion of the bid removed from his testimony because he did not have personal knowledge of Mr. Altman's involvement in the negotiations. Mr. Birchall acknowledged that he had arranged the $97.4 billion bid with Marc Toberoff, one of the lawyers representing Mr. Musk in his suit against OpenAI. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied the suit's claims.)

OpenAI co-founder says he feared Musk would 'physically attack' him

OAKLAND, Calif. -- The internal debate at tech startup OpenAI got so heated back in 2017 that one of its co-founders, Greg Brockman, feared that co-founder Elon Musk would hit him, Brockman testified Tuesday in a trial that will determine the future of the organization behind ChatGPT. "I truly thought he was going to physically attack me," Brockman said during the fifth day of the trial. Brockman said the tense encounter happened in August that year, shortly after the OpenAI co-founders decided they needed far more money to develop artificial intelligence than they thought they'd be able to raise as a charity. He testified that they were batting around ideas, including the creation of a for-profit arm. "The meeting started out very pleasant," Brockman testified. Musk was there and had just given Tesla vehicles as gifts to his fellow OpenAI co-founders, Brockman said. Musk is the longtime CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and, years later, would found his own AI startup, xAI, which competes with OpenAI. Ilya Sutskever, another of the co-founders, reciprocated at the meeting by giving Musk a Tesla-related painting as a gift. But Brockman testified that the tone of the meeting changed when the topic of equity shares in the proposed for-profit OpenAI arm came up. He said that Musk wanted majority control of the organization and rejected a proposal that all the co-founders get equal shares. "He said, 'I decline,'" Brockman said. He said Musk refused to accept others having a say. "He said, 'When are you going to be departing OpenAI?' He said, 'I will withhold funding until you decide what to do.'" By then, he said, Musk was visibly angry and he stood up, stormed around the room, grabbed the painting and left. No one ended up exchanging blows, he said. The meeting was part of a chaotic period in OpenAI's history that may be central to the trial. Musk is suing Brockman and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, alleging they breached the duty they owed OpenAI as a charity and have enriched themselves. Brockman and Altman counter that OpenAI is still controlled by a nonprofit foundation and that Musk agreed with them years ago about the need to raise money from investors in order to attract and retain the best AI researchers. Testimony began last week with Musk, who said that Brockman and Altman misled him about their intentions as they gradually made changes at OpenAI before he sued in 2024. Musk testified that he made a $38 million founding donation to OpenAI. In 2024, OpenAI emphasized that it had raised $90 million from sources besides Musk. OpenAI was founded in 2015. It added a capped-profit arm in 2019 and announced a restructuring last year that resulted in the nonprofit foundation having a 26% ownership share. If the jury and judge find Altman and Brockman liable, Musk has said he wants the court to bar them from working at OpenAI and order other changes to undo its restructuring. Brockman testified for four hours Tuesday and described other unusual moments from OpenAI's early days. Just weeks before the meeting where Musk became angry, Brockman said there was a meeting at a San Francisco-area house that Musk owned and called his "haunted mansion" because of its dated decor and lack of maintenance. Musk warned his co-founders ahead of that meeting to expect "party carnage" in the house, Brockman testified. "It was clear that there had been a party there the night before. There was confetti and cups all around," Brockman said. That meeting also included two women who had or would later have personal connections to Musk, Brockman said: actor Amber Heard, whom Musk was dating at the time, and Musk adviser Shivon Zilis, who now has several children with Musk. Zilis is expected to testify at the trial on Wednesday. She has worked for Musk's brain science startup, Neuralink, and served on the OpenAI board of directors until 2023, operating as a bridge between the AI firm and Musk after he had earlier left the board. On the stand Tuesday, Brockman said that although he admired some parts of Musk's business record, he became disillusioned with the billionaire's understanding of AI. He said Musk appeared underwhelmed when presented with GPT-1, an early version of the AI technology that would later underpin ChatGPT. Musk called the technology "stupid" and said "kids on the internet" could do a better job, statements that dismayed an early OpenAI employee who nearly left the industry over the incident, Brockman testified. "He knows rockets, he knows electric cars, and I believe he did not -- and does not -- know AI," Brockman said, adding, "I did not believe he would spend enough time to get good at it." He said that he and fellow co-founders "considered voting to remove Elon from the board" in 2017 before deciding against the idea. He left the board voluntarily in 2018. Brockman faced numerous questions about a journal that he kept on his laptop to document and think through both personal and business matters. In one entry from September 2017 that has repeatedly come up during the trial, Brockman wrote about his desire to "get out from Elon" and wondered, "Financially, what will take me to $1B?" Brockman testified that it was "very painful" to have the journal quoted in open court but added, "There's nothing in there I'm ashamed of." He said in testimony a day earlier that his stake in OpenAI is now worth nearly $30 billion, a figure that would make him among the wealthiest 100 people in the world, according to Bloomberg. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers told jurors Tuesday that evidence in the case could wrap up early next week, clearing them to begin deliberating. She said some jurors had been submitting questions to her about the case. "I have been receiving your questions and I have been sharing them with the lawyers. The lawyers have been trying to incorporate those questions into their examinations," the judge said, though she did not reveal the contents of the questions.

Musk 'was going to hit me,' OpenAI executive says at trial

Oakland (United States) (AFP) - OpenAI President Greg Brockman told a California jury Tuesday that Elon Musk physically threatened him during a 2017 confrontation, testifying that the billionaire stormed out after he was refused absolute control of the artificial intelligence company. "I actually thought he was going to hit me," Brockman said. The testimony came on the second day of Brockman's appearance at the trial of Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, in which the Tesla and SpaceX founder accuses the company of betraying its original nonprofit mission. According to Musk, the company pivoted to a for-profit structure and misappropriated his $38 million founding donation to build a company now valued at more than $850 billion. OpenAI counters that Musk left voluntarily after failing to seize majority control and has since become the company's direct competitor through his own AI venture, xAI. Under cross-examination by OpenAI attorney Sarah Eddy, Brockman sought to reframe diary entries that Musk's lawyers had used the previous day to portray him as a calculating opportunist. One November 2017 entry read: "It'd be wrong to steal the non-profit from him... That'd be pretty morally bankrupt." "It's very painful, very deeply personal writings that were never meant for the world to see, but there's nothing in there I'm ashamed of," Brockman said in court. Brockman also testified that when Musk announced his departure from OpenAI in February 2018, he told staff he intended to pursue AI development inside Tesla without regard for safety. "If the sheep are dictating safety and the wolves are not, then there's no purpose," Brockman said Musk allegedly told employees at the time. OpenAI's legal team argues the timeline proves Musk was fully aware of the company's commercial pivot -- and that his 2024 lawsuit, filed after he launched rival lab xAI, is meritless. Brockman said that OpenAI now spends $50 billion a year on computing power -- compared to just $30 million in 2017 -- showing how expensive the technology has become and why a charity-style organization could never have footed the bill. Brockman acknowledged Monday that his stake in OpenAI is valued at $30 billion. Altman is expected to testify as early as next week.

Musk and OpenAI lawyer spar on third day of trial

Elon Musk accused an OpenAI lawyer of asking misleading questions designed to trick him and the jury, as the high-stakes trial against ChatGPT maker entered the third day. Tempers flared between Elon Musk and OpenAI's lawyer on Thursday as the tech billionaire's legal battle with the ChatGPT maker entered its third day. The trial centres on Musk's claim that OpenAI abandoned its founding mission and turned into a for-profit company. Lawyers for OpenAI deny wrongdoing and have previously said Musk's lawsuit aimed at undercutting its rapid growth and bolstering Musk's own company xAI, which he launched in 2023. During Thursday's proceedings, OpenAI lawyer William Savitt questioned Musk about earlier testimony in which he said OpenAI would not necessarily be violating its founding commitments if investor profits were capped. "It depends on how high the cap is," Musk replied. Savitt then said that "wasn't your complete answer yesterday right?" In response, Musk said "few answers are going to be complete, especially if you cut me off all the time". He added that if the cap is "super high," then OpenAI is "really a for-profit at that point." Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers also questioned Musk's legal team about the fact that the billionaire is now building a company in the same sector as OpenAI. "Your client, despite these risks, is creating a company that is in the exact same space," she told Musk's lawyers. Savitt also asked Musk about his other companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and X, and whether they were all for-profit businesses. Musk said they were, and said he believed each was "socially beneficial". Savitt asked why Musk has not started a nonprofit himself, eight years after he left OpenAI. "I thought I had started a nonprofit with OpenAI but they stole it," Musk replied, adding that this is "the entire basis of this lawsuit." Musk accused Savitt of asking misleading questions designed to trick him and the jury. Musk also referred to the Terminator films while discussing artificial intelligence and the future of humanity. Judge Rogers told both sides not to turn the case into a broader debate about the existential risks of AI. "(People) don't want to put the future of humanity into Mr. Musk's hands," Roger said. "This is not a trial on the safety risks of artificial intelligence. This is not a trial on whether or not AI has damaged humanity," she said. The trial in federal court in Oakland, in California the United States, is scheduled to continue through late May. Judge Rogers excused Musk from the witness stand on Thursday, but he may be called back later. Musk was the biggest individual financial backer of the ChatGPT maker in the beginning, contributing more than $44 million (€38 million) to the then-startup.

Musk calls himself 'a fool' on the stand for funding OpenAI

The tense day three of Musk v. Altman saw OpenAI's lead attorney William Savitt use Musk's own emails, pledge shortfalls, and Shivon Zilis texts to argue the lawsuit is a competitive grievance dressed as a charitable principle. Elon Musk called himself "a fool" for funding OpenAI, accused its leadership of "looting the nonprofit," and clashed repeatedly with the company's lawyer in a tense cross-examination in Oakland federal court on Wednesday. The day's proceedings. day three of the four-week trial of Musk v. Altman, were the most combative yet, as OpenAI's lead trial attorney William Savitt methodically tried to turn Musk's donations, emails, and personal relationships against his own charitable trust argument. "I gave them $38 million of essentially free funding, which they then used to create an $800 billion for-profit company," Musk told the jury. "I actually was a fool who created free funding for them to create a startup. I literally was." The statement was striking: Musk's own legal framing has positioned him as a deceived donor rather than a failed corporate power play, and calling himself a fool reinforces that framing for the jury. But Savitt was quick to probe the gap between Musk's $38 million in actual donations and the "up to $1 billion" he had pledged when OpenAI was founded. "Without me, OpenAI wouldn't exist!" Musk shot back, raising his voice when Savitt pressed him on the funding shortfall. Musk argued that beyond money, he contributed his reputation, contacts, and credibility, "These things have value", and that his total contribution exceeded $100 million in intangible terms. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers at one point intervened as Savitt flagged to the court that Musk was proving "difficult" to get direct answers from. "That is the challenge of all litigants," the judge replied. The most damaging material Savitt deployed came not from OpenAI's own records but from Musk's personal communications with Shivon Zilis, a venture capitalist who was then on OpenAI's board and is also the mother of four of Musk's children. Savitt presented a 2018 email in which Zilis asked Musk whether she should remain close to OpenAI in order to "keep feeding him information on the company." Musk confirmed he agreed she should. He also confirmed that Zilis facilitated ongoing communication between him and OpenAI after he departed the board. Savitt's second Zilis exhibit was more structurally significant: an email from Zilis to Sam Teller, who worked for Musk, describing two ways OpenAI's structure could change, "Roll everything into a B corp," or "OpenAI C Corp and OpenAI nonprofit." Savitt's argument was direct: Musk was presented with for-profit restructuring options and considered them. Asked whether he had ever instructed Zilis to file paperwork converting OpenAI to a for-profit corporation, Musk replied: "I don't recall." Savitt then put his sharpest question of the day: "You were never really committed to OpenAI being a nonprofit, were you, Mr. Musk?" Musk disputed the premise. But the jury now has two structurally contradictory pictures: a donor who claims he was deceived about the nonprofit status, and a co-founder who was actively considering for-profit conversions in internal communications. Under questioning from his own attorney on redirect, Musk testified about the sequence of events that drove him from scepticism to lawsuit. It was Microsoft's $10 billion investment, not the initial for-profit structuring, that he identified as the decisive violation. "At a $10 billion scale, there's no way Microsoft is just giving that as a donation or any kind of charitable way," he said. "I texted Sam Altman and said, 'What the hell is going on?', something to that effect. I think I said, 'This is a bait and switch.'" He also raised the safety argument that has been central to Musk's public positioning since he filed the lawsuit in 2024. Asked whether a for-profit AI company creates a safety risk, he said: "Yes, I think it creates a safety risk." Savitt countered that Musk couldn't actually know what OpenAI's safety practices look like from the outside. "You just don't know," Savitt said. Musk acknowledged he did not know the specifics of OpenAI's internal safety work but maintained that the for-profit structure itself was the concern: "It does worry me that a nonprofit suddenly is a for-profit with unlimited profit." Savitt also pressed Musk on xAI directly, asking whether Grok "lags much farther behind" ChatGPT. Musk acknowledged that xAI, now absorbed into SpaceX, has "very small market share" and is "much smaller" than OpenAI today, while insisting xAI is only "technically" a competitor. The implication was unmistakable: that a man building a direct AI competitor to OpenAI is using the courts to slow it down, dressed in the language of charitable principle. Savitt told the court he expected to complete his cross-examination of Musk for approximately one further hour on Thursday, after which Musk's team planned to call Jared Birchall, the family office executive who manages Musk's personal wealth. OpenAI president Greg Brockman was given 48 hours' notice to testify and may also appear on Thursday, depending on the length of Birchall's session. The stakes of the trial have not diminished. As we reported at the outset, the most damaging exhibit in the entire case may not be anything from Musk's cross-examination but Greg Brockman's 2017 diary entry, in which he wrote: "I cannot believe that we committed to non-profit if three months later we're doing b-corp then it was a lie." Judge Gonzalez Rogers cited that entry directly in her January ruling that sent the case to trial. The advisory jury's finding on liability will inform, but will not bind, the judge's decision on remedies, which could include up to $134 billion returned to the nonprofit and the forced removal of both Altman and Brockman from OpenAI.

Musk's AI empire is unraveling -- the trial is just the beginning

On March 4, 2026, Elon Musk posted on X that "Tesla will be one of the companies to make AGI and probably the first to make it in humanoid/atom-shaping form." Less than eight weeks later, under oath in an Oakland federal courtroom, he was asked whether Tesla has any concrete plans to pursue AGI. His answer: "No." That single contradiction -- between what Musk tells his millions of followers and what he admits when he's facing perjury charges -- captures the story of his decade-long obsession with artificial intelligence better than any timeline ever could. But here's a timeline anyway, because the trial of Musk v. Altman is now exposing, under oath, what many of us have long suspected: Musk's AI ambitions were never about safety, open access, or benefiting humanity. They were about control. Last year, I wrote about cracks forming in Elon Musk's armor of lies -- how the convergence of the Tesla shareholder lawsuit over xAI and OpenAI's countersuit was starting to expose Musk's contradictions. Thirteen months later, those cracks have become chasms. The Musk v. Altman trial, now in its second week, is producing daily revelations that connect directly to Tesla shareholders. Here's the updated timeline. December 2015: Musk co-founds OpenAI as a nonprofit with Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, pledging $1 billion (he ultimately contributed $38 million). The stated mission: ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. 2016-2017: Musk emails NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang to secure an early supercomputer for OpenAI, emphasizing the nonprofit status. Internally, he's the biggest name on the letterhead, and he uses that leverage to recruit top AI talent -- including researchers who, according to Brockman's trial testimony, were as often repelled by Musk's involvement as attracted to it. Mid-2017: According to Brockman's testimony this week, Musk begins pushing OpenAI to go for-profit -- the very thing he would later sue them for doing. But there was a catch: he wanted full control. Brockman testified that Musk told him he needed $80 billion to build a city on Mars, and that controlling OpenAI's AI could help him raise that money. August 2017: Internal memos detail concerns from Brockman and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever about Musk's desire for control. When the equity discussion didn't go Musk's way during an in-person meeting, Brockman testified that Musk said "I decline," stood up, and stormed around the table so aggressively that Brockman thought Musk was going to physically hit him. Instead, Musk tore a painting off the wall and stormed out, threatening to withhold funding. Late 2017: While still on OpenAI's board, Musk secretly recruits OpenAI researcher Andrej Karpathy to lead Tesla's self-driving AI effort. On the stand last week, Musk claimed Karpathy was already planning to leave. Brockman's testimony directly contradicted this -- he said Musk came to him with "an apology and a confession." A 2017 email from Musk to a Tesla VP, presented as evidence, reads: "The OpenAI guys are gonna want to kill me. But it had to be done." February 2018: After failing to secure the CEO role at OpenAI, Musk resigns from the board. He frames the departure publicly as being about a conflict of interest with Tesla's AI work. The trial evidence paints a different picture: he left because he couldn't be in charge. 2018-2019: Musk begins telling Tesla investors that Tesla will be a major player in AI and that AI products -- particularly "Full Self-Driving" -- would be critical to Tesla's future. He promises a fleet of one million robotaxis by 2020. This is where his AI obsession formally becomes a Tesla shareholder story. This is worth its own list because the scale of it is staggering: Throughout all of this, Musk is telling Tesla investors that Tesla's AI capabilities are what justify the company's inflated valuation. The stock price is, to this day, built largely on the promise that Tesla will crack autonomy. To understand why Musk created xAI -- despite spending years telling Tesla investors that Tesla itself was an AI company -- you have to understand the Twitter disaster. 2021-2022: Musk sells over $23 billion worth of Tesla stock to fund his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter (with additional billions sold for tax obligations). This slashes his Tesla stake from around 23% to about 13%. It's a self-inflicted wound that changes everything that follows. October 2022: The Twitter deal closes. Musk now controls a money-losing social media platform and holds a much smaller stake in Tesla -- the company whose valuation he'd spent years inflating with AI promises. Early 2023: With his reduced Tesla stake, Musk faces a problem: he told investors Tesla would be an AI powerhouse, but he no longer has the ownership position to fully benefit from it. His solution isn't to buy more Tesla stock. It's to create a separate AI company -- one he controls entirely. March 2023: Musk co-founds xAI, a private AI company under his full control, with a team of researchers recruited from Google DeepMind, Microsoft Research, and -- inevitably -- Tesla. The move is remarkable: the CEO of a company he'd been calling "an AI company" for years launches a competing AI startup on the side. January 2024: A Delaware court voids Musk's $56 billion Tesla compensation package, ruling it wasn't "entirely fair" to shareholders. Musk responds by threatening to build AI products outside of Tesla unless shareholders give him more control -- effectively holding Tesla's AI future hostage to get more shares. The message is clear: give me what I want, or I'll take the AI to xAI. June 2024: Tesla shareholders sue Musk for breach of fiduciary duty, alleging he diverted Tesla's AI resources -- including thousands of NVIDIA H100 GPUs, key employees, and strategic focus -- to his private company. Separately, shareholders re-approve the $56 billion compensation package in a new vote, giving Musk the control he demanded. September 2024: Musk states publicly that Tesla has "no need to license anything from xAI." Remember this. April 2025: I wrote about the cracks forming in Musk's armor of lies, connecting the Tesla shareholder lawsuit, the OpenAI countersuit, and the broader pattern. October 2025: Tesla discloses it's exploring an investment in xAI. The very company shareholders are suing Musk over, Tesla might now fund with shareholder money. Late 2025: Tesla's annual filing reveals xAI purchased $430 million in Tesla Megapack battery systems throughout 2025. Tesla is literally powering the data centers of the company its CEO created as a competitor. January 2026: xAI tells investors their goal is to "develop self-sufficient AI to power robots like Tesla's Optimus" -- directly contradicting Musk's "no need to license" claim from 16 months earlier. January 28, 2026: Tesla invests $2 billion in xAI's Series E round. Tesla shareholders are now funding the very company the shareholder lawsuit argues Musk had no right to create outside of Tesla. February 2, 2026: SpaceX acquires xAI in an all-stock deal valuing xAI at $250 billion and the combined entity at $1.25 trillion. This is the largest merger in history. The timing raises questions: why does SpaceX need an AI company, and why now? February 11, 2026: The answer starts to emerge. After the merger, key departures accelerate. Co-founder Tony Wu leaves, followed within 24 hours by Jimmy Ba. Musk announces xAI is being "rebuilt" following the departures -- an extraordinary admission about a company just valued at $250 billion. March 2026: By now, 9 of 12 original xAI co-founders have left. By late March, all 11 are gone, along with 80+ researchers and engineers, including chief engineer Igor Babuschkin. Musk posts on X that xAI "was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up." Let me repeat that: every single co-founder left the company that SpaceX just bought for $250 billion. March 4, 2026: Musk posts the tweet claiming Tesla will be "one of the companies to make AGI." This is while he's actively rebuilding xAI from scratch. March 11, 2026: Musk confirms a joint xAI-Tesla "Digital Optimus" project -- a direct integration of xAI's Grok into Tesla products. This announcement obliterates his 2024 claim that Tesla had "no need to license anything from xAI" and hands the shareholder lawsuit plaintiffs exactly the evidence they need. April 21, 2026: SpaceX announces a deal with Cursor -- an AI coding startup -- with an option to acquire it for $60 billion. The deal involves using SpaceX's Colossus supercomputer to build a new AI model. Let that sink in: SpaceX paid $250 billion for xAI and its AI capabilities, and within two months, it's paying another company up to $60 billion to build a new model. If xAI's technology was worth $250 billion, why does SpaceX need Cursor? April 23, 2026: On Tesla's Q1 2026 earnings call, Musk admits that Hardware 3 lacks the memory bandwidth for unsupervised FSD. He pushes unsupervised driving to "probably Q4" -- another goalpost move in a decade of goalpost moves. April 25, 2026: Two days before his trial against OpenAI begins, Musk texts Greg Brockman to gauge interest in a settlement. Brockman suggests both sides drop their claims. Musk's response: "By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be." April 28 - May 2, 2026 (Week 1 -- Musk's testimony): The first week belongs to Musk on the stand, and it's a parade of contradictions: May 5-6, 2026 (Week 2 -- Brockman's testimony): Greg Brockman takes the stand and systematically dismantles Musk's narrative: May 6, 2026: Anthropic announces it will use all the compute capacity of SpaceX's Colossus 1 data center -- over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs. The company that Musk built to compete with OpenAI and Anthropic is now renting its data center to Anthropic because it has no competitive model to run on it. Step back and look at the complete arc: Musk co-founded OpenAI to control AI development. When he couldn't get control, he left. He told Tesla investors that Tesla would build AI and autonomy -- promises that inflated Tesla's valuation for years without delivery. He founded xAI as a private company using Tesla's talent and resources. He got Tesla shareholders to invest $2 billion in it. He sold it to SpaceX for $250 billion. Every co-founder left. SpaceX is now paying Cursor to build the AI model that xAI was supposed to have, and renting xAI's data center to a competitor because there's nothing useful running on it. And through it all, Musk used AI as a narrative tool -- a story to tell whichever audience needed to hear it at any given moment. Tesla investors heard "Tesla will build AGI." OpenAI heard "this should be a nonprofit for humanity." xAI investors heard "$250 billion valuation." Under oath, the story is different every time. We've been covering Musk's AI contradictions for years, and the OpenAI trial is now confirming what the evidence has long suggested: this was never about building safe AI for humanity. It was about control. The most damning revelation isn't any single lie -- it's the pattern. Musk tells Tesla investors that Tesla will build AGI, then testifies under oath that it won't. He tells the public xAI exists to keep AI safe, then admits xAI copies OpenAI's models. He sues OpenAI for abandoning its nonprofit mission while his own trial witnesses testify he was the one pushing to go for-profit. He sells xAI for $250 billion, then the entire founding team walks out and the company has to be "rebuilt from the foundations up." For Tesla shareholders specifically, the question is simple: how much of Tesla's valuation is built on AI promises that Musk himself admits, under oath, aren't real? He said Tesla has no plans for AGI. He admitted HW3 can't deliver unsupervised FSD. The robotaxi timeline has been pushed back for a decade straight. And the AI company he built with Tesla's resources is now an empty shell renting its servers to competitors. The cracks we wrote about last year aren't cracks anymore. The armor has fallen off. What's underneath is a decade of promises made to sell stock, recruit talent, and maintain control -- promises that Musk can't keep repeating when he's under oath.

OpenAI President grilled over his $30 billion personal stake and 'duty to humanity' - SiliconANGLE

OpenAI President grilled over his $30 billion personal stake and 'duty to humanity' OpenAI Group PBC co-founder and President Greg Brockman today disclosed in an ongoing landmark trial that his stake in the company is worth close to $30 billion, a windfall Elon Musk has invoked in his argument that the company sacrificed its original nonprofit mission. Musk's civil lawsuit alleges that Altman and Brockman (pictured) swerved from the path of the company's founding goal of becoming a nonprofit for the common good but later turned into moneymaking venture without Musk's consent. Brockman, who said he never personally invested any money in the venture, was asked on the stand to explain his fortune - a number that would now place him reasonably high up on the Forbes' list of the world's richest people. Brockman testified that the original mission was the same, despite the board selling equity stakes to investors. When asked by Musk's lawyer Steven Molo about the $30 billion and the $852 billion company's ostensible nonprofit mission, Brockman replied, "Compensation was certainly secondary to the mission." OpenAI's attorneys produced evidence of text messages sent by Musk to Brockman two days before the trial started. Musk had written he was trying to "gauge interest in settlement,", after which he warned that if the trial went forward, "you and Sam [Altman] will be the most hated men in America." The lawyers argued that such words were evidence that rather than seeking a legitimate grievance about a for-all-mankind entity becoming a capitalistic venture, Musk, the co-founder of rival AI firm, xAI, was always only trying to stifle a competitor. "It tends to prove motive and bias, and, in particular, that Mr. Musk's motivation in pursuing this lawsuit is to attack a competitor and its principals," the layers said. In what was a combative day for both sides, one that didn't put tech billionaires in the best light, Molo compared Brockman to a "guy who robs a bank," a comment Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers struck as argumentative. In a separate statement Molo claimed Brockman had created a "money-making machine" when he started transferring money out of OpenAI's charitable operation to the for-profit arm. Brockman responded by saying in 2018 when he was given his stake, there was no sign OpenAI would ever become financially successful. It was long before the company's chief product, ChatGPT, was created. He also asserted that the company is still a nonprofit foundation, but that it was agreed from the beginning that there would be a for-profit arm in the spirit of the public good. Musk, he said, was no longer making donations by 2017 and he left the board a year later. "That is something that we've built through blood, sweat and tears, during all these years since Elon left," Brockman added. When he was asked by Molo if his $30 billion stake contradicts his "duty to humanity," Brockman fired back, "No, I believe that we have developed the most well-capitalized nonprofit in human history." The money, he claimed, was always an after-thought in the larger scheme of things.

Key takeaways from Musk's testimony at OpenAI trial

May 1 (Reuters) - Elon Musk testified for more than seven hours over three days this week at a trial in Oakland, California, over the future of OpenAI, casting his lawsuit against the owner of ChatGPT as a defense of the institution of charitable giving. Musk, the CEO of Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab and SpaceX as well as the world's richest person, is also suing OpenAI's Chief Executive Sam Altman and its President Greg Brockman, saying they betrayed him and the public by abandoning the mission to be a benevolent steward of AI for humanity. Below is a look at key testimony from the trial. MUSK RECASTS OPENAI AS A 'CHARITY' The word "charity" doesn't appear once in the 2015 blog post, opens new tab announcing the formation of OpenAI as a nonprofit artificial intelligence research company. But Musk repeatedly described OpenAI as a charity and testified that Altman and Brockman reneged on an initial promise to keep the nonprofit model. "It was specifically meant to be for a charity that does not benefit any individual person. I could've started it as a for-profit and I specifically chose not to," Musk testified. MUSK SAYS OPENAI WOULDN'T EXIST WITHOUT HIM Building an AI research lab requires top-tier talent and considerable computing power. Musk said OpenAI relied on ⁠his connections for both. "I came up with the idea, the name, recruited the key people, taught them everything I know, provided all of the initial funding," Musk said. Musk said he recruited Ilya Sutskever, a top researcher, from Google (GOOGL.O), opens new tab while that company's founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin repeatedly tried to entice him to stay. "After I recruited Ilya to OpenAI, Larry Page refused to speak to me ever again," Musk testified. On computing power, Musk said that OpenAI relied on his connections with Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab CEO Satya Nadella and Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab CEO Jensen Huang. "The only one who could actually call Satya Nadella and have him pick up was me," Musk said. "The only reason he's in this thing is because of me. Those are his words." MUSK SPOKE ABOUT AI SAFETY Musk testified that he learned from discussions with Larry Page that the Google founder lacked concern about AI safety. "I said, 'What if AI wipes out all humans?' He said that would be fine so long as artificial intelligence survives. I said that was insane, that's just crazy. And then he called me a 'speciesist' because I care about humans more than AI. ... The reason OpenAI exists ⁠is because Larry Page called me a 'speciesist.' ... What would be the opposite of Google? An open-source nonprofit." 'IT FELT LIKE A BRIBE' Musk said he asked Altman in late 2022 about an investment of $10 billion in OpenAI by Microsoft, which Musk described as a "bait and switch" in a text message shown to jurors. Altman responded, "I agree this feels bad." Altman then offered Musk an opportunity to buy stock in OpenAI, which Musk said "frankly, it felt like a bribe." MUSK, ON TRAINING HIS OWN AI COMPANY Musk was asked why he used OpenAI to train his xAI company if he considered OpenAI's model a danger. "It is standard practice to ⁠use other AIs to validate your AI," Musk said. Asked why his company was not structured as a charity, Musk testified, "For profit companies can be socially beneficial." 'WE ALL COULD DIE' Musk's cross-examination by William Savitt, a lawyer for the OpenAI defendants, was tense at times. Musk accused Savitt of asking tricky and leading questions, which the judge said was permitted. Savitt was admonished for not allowing Musk to finish his ⁠thoughts. "Few answers are going to be complete especially when you cut me off all the time," Musk said. There was also pre-trial tension when Musk's lawyers wanted to be able to question an expert witness about extinction risk of AI, something OpenAI opposed. "Extinction risk is a real problem. This is a real risk. We all could die," said Musk's lawyer Steven Molo. The judge ⁠limited the scope of the expert's testimony and said that she thought "it's ironic that your client, despite these risks, is creating a company that's in the exact space." Reporting by Deepa Seetharaman, Greg Bensinger, Max Cherney and Kenrick Cai in Oakland, California; Writing by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Will Dunham Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Elon Musk Is Probably Going to Lose the OpenAI Case

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. A new scale of humiliation ritual kicked off this week as Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI went to trial in Silicon Valley. The Tesla CEO, who co-founded OpenAI, is suing the artificial intelligence firm and two of its other co-founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, for diverting from its original nonprofit goal of developing A.I. for the public good in favor of for-profit motives. "This lawsuit is very simple: It is not OK to steal a charity," Musk said on the witness stand on Tuesday. The trial is big by every conceivable measure. Both Musk and OpenAI have mustered high-dollar legal armies who are prepared to wage potentially years of litigation, including this federal trial. Millions of dollars are being lit on fire each week it unfolds, and the fight is over sums that are similarly astronomical: Musk is seeking more than $130 billion in damages, as well as the removal of Altman and Brockman from the company, and a return of OpenAI to a pure nonprofit position. The jury's decision could change the very future of Silicon Valley and the future of tech throughout the world forever. But it probably won't. Winning, at least in the legal sense, doesn't appear to be Musk's main goal. What the trial offers him is an opportunity: a very public forum in which to challenge OpenAI's story, drag its leadership through potentially embarrassing discovery and testimony, and inflict as much pain as possible on his rivals. In Musk's telling, it went like this: He helped launch OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015 because he was so afraid of the implications of artificial general intelligence that he wanted to make sure there was a firm out there ensuring that it benefits "all of humanity." Keeping OpenAI as a nonprofit, and not driven by shareholder interests, was meant to ensure that it acted as a transparent and safety-oriented counterweight to companies like Google's DeepMind that were developing A.I. in a closed, profit-driven way. This is where it starts to get muddied. As it turned out, training bleeding-edge, frontier A.I. models was very expensive. As costs rose, the nonprofit idea started to look more and more like a barrier to helping the company achieve its goals, since it limited its ability to raise money. Meanwhile, according to OpenAI, Musk wanted more control of the firm and proposed folding it into Tesla. Tensions rose and Musk eventually left OpenAI's board in 2018. Things were quiet for a while. OpenAI began steadily drifting from its nonprofit mission by allowing outside investment, including a partnership with Microsoft in 2019. Musk went off to focus solely on making humans a multiplanetary species (just kidding: he became a right-wing troll during the pandemic and bought Twitter instead). Then OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, transforming the A.I. firm into a household name overnight. Musk launched his own xAI the following year, and positioned himself as an outright rival to his old nonprofit. By 2023, the fractures between Musk and OpenAI were much more apparent. He criticized it for being a "closed source" for-profit company. Of course, he also blasted it for being too "politically correct" and "woke." The situation came to a critical mass in 2024 when Musk sued OpenAI for diverging from its nonprofit mission. Following this, on X, he regularly excoriated Altman for "stealing a charity" and dubbed him "Scam Altman." That brings us to the present day, where Musk's lawsuit has made its way into an Oakland courtroom where he's unlikely to win. Legal experts largely agree that Musk's case doesn't have a snowball's chance in a data center of winning. For one, the billionaire has limited leverage here. His money can only get him so far -- he's not a regulator or the California attorney general, officials typically responsible for enforcing nonprofits' obligations. The judge allowed the case to go to trial based on a narrow exception, rooted in a 1964 precedent, that allows a donor with "special interest" to sue a nonprofit to make sure donated money is used for its intended purpose, if the AG was too busy to step in. Even then, Musk's core argument that OpenAI "betrayed the mission" is legally shaky. There's no contract that said OpenAI had to remain a nonprofit forever. There's also documentation that shows Musk himself, at various points, entertained for-profit structures. As he has a habit of doing, he's making a massive financial decision mostly based on vibes. So why is he doing this? We know that Musk can be vain and vindictive. He has a long history of turning personal grievances into public spectacles. He paid a premium for a social media platform and remade it in his own image. He's used that same platform to lob explosive accusations at critics and allies alike, blowing up a professional and personal relationship with President Donald Trump by tying him to the Epstein files. It's also why he baselessly accused a British diver of being a pedophile after he criticized his misguided effort to help a group of Thai children stuck in a flooded cave (yes, remember that?). His case against OpenAI follows this pattern: a messy, high-stakes conflict waged more in the court of public opinion than the actual courtroom. That's the point of all this. It's not the money or the nonprofit status. It's to drag OpenAI and its other founders through the mud until they come out the other side as dirty as he is. After all, dirt is sure to emerge. As the case proceeds, internal communications -- emails, text messages, DMs -- are going to surface that won't make anybody look good, least of all Musk. Already, the case is a less-than-flattering look at the Tesla CEO, with jury selection complicated by the fact that "people don't like him." During his testimony and cross-examination on Tuesday and Wednesday, he looked petty and pugilistic, offering answers inconsistent with his deposition and quibbling with defense attorney William Savitt over yes-or-no questions for hours. "I have never been more sympathetic to Sam Altman in my life," Elizabeth Lopatto, senior writer for the Verge, wrote after sitting through five hours of testimony from Musk. What is unfolding in the Oakland courtroom is less a trial about a nonprofit's mission and more an attempt at humiliation underwritten by the wealthiest man in the world, who is more chips than shoulder. He's somebody who knows the power of public perception. He's a lot like his old boss in the White House in that regard. Both men are keenly attuned to (and wield immense power over) digital and public media. Musk is one of the few people wealthy enough to casually throw this kind of money after a grievance. Plus, there's a reason he's focusing his ire on Altman. OpenAI represents something that Musk has rarely had to contend with: a success story that outgrew him. Not only did the company continue after he left, but it flourished. Its flagship product, ChatGPT, has become shorthand for A.I. itself. It's the kind of cultural and commercial breakthrough that we haven't seen since the iPhone -- and it happened largely without him. For a figure who is synonymous with the industries he touches -- spaceflight, electric cars, social media -- OpenAI's rise and dominance carry an uncomfortable implication: One of the most consequential technological shifts of our time can happen beyond his reach -- and without his name and face attached to it. No wonder he's trying to hang on.

Musk's lawyer hammers OpenAI co-founder over nearly $30 billion stake in organization

OAKLAND, Calif. -- OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman disclosed in a trial Monday that his stake in the firm is worth nearly $30 billion, confirming a figure that co-founder Elon Musk has pointed to in arguing that OpenAI has abandoned its mission as a nonprofit organization. Brockman took the stand during the fourth day of the trial. Musk is suing Brockman and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, alleging that they unlawfully converted a charity that he helped start into a for-profit business, best known for creating the popular artificial intelligence app ChatGPT. Brockman was repeatedly asked to reconcile his nearly $30 billion stake with OpenAI's stated mission of making AI technology to benefit all of humanity. He testified that the mission hasn't changed, even after its board has sold equity stakes to outside investors. "You just happen to be $30 billion richer?" asked Musk lawyer Steven Molo. "Compensation was certainly secondary to the mission," Brockman responded. The trial could reshape OpenAI as an organization and alter the industry-wide push for advanced AI. It's also unusual for featuring testimony from rival tech billionaires. Musk, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and xAI, vowed to make Brockman and Altman "the most hated men in America" through evidence presented at the trial, according to the content of text messages included in a court filing Sunday. Musk texted Brockman two days before the trial began to gauge the possibility of a settlement, according to the filing by OpenAI's lawyers. Monday's testimony was combative, raising ideas about what kind of tech industry wealth is truly deserved. Molo at one point compared Brockman to a "guy who robs a bank," a phrase that was stricken as argumentative by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. At another point, Molo asked Brockman about transferring assets from OpenAI's charitable side to its for-profit side to create a "money-making machine." Brockman pushed back. He testified that he was given his stake in OpenAI in 2018, years before the release of ChatGPT when it was far from certain that the organization would be successful either financially or technologically. He said OpenAI's board granted him the stake, and that he didn't participate in the board vote to do so. He testified that OpenAI is still controlled by a nonprofit foundation, and that its for-profit arm is what's known as a public-benefit corporation, a type of corporation that must take into account both a public-spirited mission as well as the interests of shareholders. He said that all of OpenAI's co-founders, Musk included, wanted it to have a for-profit arm of some kind and that what they disagreed on was the details. And he said that Musk has little connection to OpenAI as it exists now. Musk stopped donating to OpenAI in 2017 and left its board in 2018. "That is something that we've built through blood, sweat and tears, during all these years since Elon left," Brockman testified. The first OpenAI office was Brockman's apartment in San Francisco, he testified. Brockman is relatively obscure compared to the trial's other billionaires, Musk and Altman, but is a well-known figure within the tech industry. Before co-founding OpenAI in 2015, he was the chief technology officer of payments company Stripe. But his passion for the subjects at issue came through. Brockman at times spoke so quickly that the court reporter making a transcript could not keep up, and the judge stepped in to urge Brockman to speak more slowly. Several times, Brockman had to repeat himself to make the record clear. OpenAI said in March that it was valued at $852 billion after its latest funding round. After a restructuring in October, the nonprofit foundation arm owned 26% while OpenAI employees owned 26%. Molo, though, kept turning the testimony back to the nearly $30 billion figure, which Musk posted about last year on X. Musk's lawsuit alleges that Brockman, Altman and others breached their duties to OpenAI as a charitable organization and unlawfully enriched themselves. Molo mentioned the nearly $30 billion figure more than a dozen times during more than two hours of questioning Brockman. "Do you believe that your nearly $30 billion stake... breaches your duty to humanity?" he asked. "No, I believe that we have developed the most well-capitalized nonprofit in human history," Brockman responded. Molo pressed Brockman on whether his primary motive was actually financial. He quoted from a September 2017 journal entry in which Brockman wrote to himself, while pondering OpenAI's future, "Financially, what will take me to $1B?" Brockman testified that the money was always secondary. Molo asked Brockman whether he would consider limiting his own compensation to $1 billion and giving the balance of his wealth back to the nonprofit arm of OpenAI. "Do you think, sitting here today, given that you're good with the $1 billion, do you think you should give the $29 billion back to the charity?" the lawyer asked. "That's not how I think about it," Brockman responded. "There are assumptions baked into the question," he added, without elaborating. At another point, Molo asked, "It takes $30 billion to get you out of bed in the morning, but $1 billion doesn't get you out of bed in the morning?" Brockman responded, "That's not what I'm saying." Not mentioned during Monday's testimony was Musk's net worth, estimated at $657 billion, highest in the world, according to Bloomberg.

Musk vs OpenAI trial enters second week

Oakland (United States) (AFP) - Following high-profile testimony from billionaire Elon Musk last week, one of OpenAI's co-founders will testify Monday in the California lawsuit brought by the world's richest man against the creators of ChatGPT. Musk is seeking to force his rivals in artificial intelligence (AI) development to revert to a non-profit foundation. Greg Brockman, co-founder and president of OpenAI, will face questioning from Musk's lawyers on Monday in the Oakland courthouse. OpenAI CEO and co-founder Sam Altman, who in 10 years has gone from being Musk's protege to a bitter rival, is not expected to take the stand until the week of May 11. The outcome of the case could shape the future of OpenAI, the fast-rising generative AI giant now valued at over $850 billion and preparing for an IPO. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, whose company is accused of illegally funding OpenAI's commercial transformation, may also testify this week. Over three days of testimony last week, Musk portrayed himself as a selfless early supporter of OpenAI, saying he contributed $38 million between 2016 and 2020 before being sidelined. The head of SpaceX and Tesla argued that he wanted to counterbalance Google's dominance and ensure that transformative AI technology -- which he has warned poses risks to humanity -- remain free from profit-driven pressures. -- Global competition -- OpenAI's current structure, while highly lucrative, still operates under a nonprofit parent entity. Last week, Altman and Brockman sat in the front row for almost the entire hearing, and made no statements inside or outside the courtroom. The trial has drawn intense media attention, with dozens of journalists covering the hearings daily. OpenAI's legal team has pushed back, questioning Musk's own financial motives. The billionaire recently folded his AI venture, xAI -- maker of the chatbot Grok -- into SpaceX, which is reportedly valued at about $1.25 trillion and may also pursue a public offering. The stakes are high. If Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ultimately rules in favor of Musk, OpenAI's IPO could be jeopardized. That could reshape the global AI landscape, where major players like Google and Chinese tech firms are competing aggressively. OpenAI is also facing growing competition from Anthropic and its Claude model. While the sector is already generating tens of billions in annual revenue, those figures still fall short of the massive investments required for talent, advanced processors and the construction of energy-intensive data centers powering the AI revolution.

Worries About AI's Risks to Humanity Loom Over the Trial Pitting Musk Against OpenAI's Leaders

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) -- At the heart of the trial pitting Elon Musk against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is a moment when they found common cause on an ever more pressing question: how to protect humanity from the risks of artificial intelligence. It turned sour, and the jury is charged with settling the ensuing legal dispute between the two Silicon Valley titans. But the unresolved questions about the dangers of AI have been looming over the federal courthouse in Oakland, California, since the trial began last week. The technology itself is not on trial - the judge has warned lawyers not to get "sidetracked" by questions about its dangers - but witness testimony has touched on concerns around workforce disruptions and the prospect raised by Musk that superhuman AI might one day kill us all. Musk, the world's richest person, filed the case accusing his fellow OpenAI co-founder of betraying promises to keep the company as a nonprofit. Altman, in turn, accuses Musk of trying to hobble the ChatGPT maker for the benefit of his own AI company. One witness, AI pioneer Stuart Russell, said that the "winner take all" power struggle over AI's future is itself threatening humanity. Musk's lawyers brought Russell to the stand as an expert witness, at the rate of $5,000 an hour. The University of California, Berkeley computer scientist listed a host of AI dangers, from racial and gender discrimination to jobs displacement, misinformation and emotional attachments that take some AI chatbot users down a spiral of psychosis. "Whichever company develops AGI first would have a very big advantage" and an increasingly big lead over everyone else, Russell told the court, using the initials for artificial general intelligence, a term for advanced AI technology that surpasses humans at many tasks. A judge's warning hasn't kept out talk of AI's dangers The trial centers on the 2015 birth of OpenAI as a nonprofit startup primarily funded by Musk. Both Musk and Altman, who has not yet testified in the trial, have said they wanted OpenAI to safely develop AGI for the benefit of humanity and not for any one person's gain or under any one person's control. And both camps allege it's the other guy who was trying to control it. A jury of nine people selected from the San Francisco Bay Area will get to say which one of them is telling the truth. Early on, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers warned lawyers, particularly Musk's, not to delve into broader AI concerns that go beyond Musk's claims that OpenAI violated its charitable mission. "This is not a trial on the safety risks of artificial intelligence. This is not a trial on whether or not AI has damaged humanity," Gonzalez Rogers told lawyers before jurors arrived at the federal courthouse. Still, Musk managed to skirt that guidance in his testimony last week. Asked to describe artificial general intelligence, Musk said it is when AI becomes "as smart as any human," and added that "we are getting close to that point," and AI will be smarter than any human as soon as next year. Musk said he has "extreme concerns" about AI and has had them for a long time. Musk said he wanted a "counterpoint" to Google, which at the time had "all the money, all the computers and all the talent" for AI, with no counterbalance. "I was concerned AI would be a double-edged sword," he said. Musk and OpenAI each say they are working for humanity's benefit During his testimony, Musk repeatedly said that he could have founded OpenAI as a for-profit company, just like the other companies he started or took over. "I deliberately chose this," he said, "for the public good." The judge expressed some skepticism. In comments to lawyers last week before the jury came into the room, Gonzalez Rogers pointed out that Musk, "despite these risks, is creating a company that is in the exact same space," referring to the billionaire's xAI artificial intelligence company, which launched in 2023 and has since merged with Musk's rocket company SpaceX. OpenAI's side also claims its goals are to benefit the public. OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman, a defendant in Musk's lawsuit along with Altman and their company, said he thought the technology OpenAI was developing was "transformative" -- bigger than corporations, corporate structures and bigger than any one individual. It was, he said, "about humanity as a whole." Brockman testified this week that his No. 1 goal was always the "mission" of OpenAI and it was Musk who sought unilateral control over the company. Brockman recalled a meeting where at first Musk seemed open to the idea of Altman being OpenAI's CEO. In the end, however, "he said people needed to know he was in charge." In addition to damages, Musk is seeking Altman's ouster from OpenAI's board. If Musk wins, it could derail OpenAI's plans for an initial public offering of its shares. ___ O'Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

The Real Stakes Behind Elon Musk's Showdown with Sam Altman

A California trial examines whether OpenAI's evolution into a for-profit giant violated its founding commitments and investor trust. With the trial underway for Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman, judges and jurors are weighing a central question: Can a company that began as a nonprofit later evolve into a for-profit enterprise without violating its original mission? Musk, an OpenAI co-founder and the owner of its rival, xAI, argues the answer is no. His sweeping demands reflect that view: the world's richest person is seeking financial damages, a return to OpenAI's original structure and a legal determination on whether its models are approaching artificial general intelligence (A.G.I.). Sign Up For Our Daily Newsletter Sign Up Thank you for signing up! By clicking submit, you agree to our <a href="http://observermedia.com/terms">terms of service</a> and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime. See all of our newsletters Musk said his concern for OpenAI reached a breaking point when OpenAI received a $10 billion investment from Microsoft in 2022. "By late 2022, I'd lost trust in Altman, and I was concerned that they were really trying to steal the charity," he said on the stand yesterday (April 29). "It turned out to be true." Musk's own ventures, including xAI, SpaceX (which acquired xAI in February for $250 billion) and Tesla, are all for-profit, yet Musk argued in court that his companies are all "socially beneficial." xAI, founded in 2023, has already secured a $200 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense for its Grok model. Like OpenAI, it is pursuing AGI. The outcome of the case now rests with Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers and a nine-person jury, who have been instructed to disregard the public personas and fortunes of the two billionaires. Musk is worth over $775 billion, and Altman is worth roughly $3.4 billion. SpaceX and OpenAI are both expected to go public this year, which could further inflate their net worth. Musk v. Altman: the gist OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit, with Musk serving as co-chair and early investor. Court filings show he invested more than $44 million over five years, though his testimony has varied. He said in court he "donated" $38 million through 2019, despite previously claiming $100 million in a deposition. The company shifted to a "capped-profit" model in 2019 and became a public benefit corporation (PBC) in October 2025. Its nonprofit arm, the OpenAI Foundation, now holds a 26 percent minority stake in OpenAI Group PBC. Musk wants OpenAI to revert to its original nonprofit structure. Altman and OpenAI argue the lawsuit is driven by rivalry and Musk's failed 2018 attempt to gain control of the company. According to OpenAI, Musk had previously pushed to convert the organization into a for-profit entity and even proposed merging it with Tesla. In court, Musk has been described as "combative," particularly during exchanges with OpenAI's lead counsel, William Savitt. At one point, he said Savitt's questions were "designed to trick me." Musk will conclude his testimony today. His family office manager, Jared Birchall, will testify after him. Additional witnesses may include Brockman and UC Berkeley computer science professor Stuart Russell. Altman is expected to take the stand later. The trial is expected to run through late May. Musk's demands Musk's claims span financial, structural and technical issues: More than $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, based on his contributions, alleged "ill-gotten gains" and punitive damages tied to claims of deception. Structural changes requiring OpenAI to return to its founding nonprofit model, which he argues was intended to develop open-source A.I. for the public good. He is also seeking to halt OpenAI's for-profit operations until those changes are made. Much of the alleged "founding agreement" is based on informal communications, which are being tested in court. A legal determination on whether OpenAI's models, including GPT-4, are approaching AGI. This question intersects with OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft, whose commercial agreements exclude AGI. Microsoft and OpenAI ended their exclusive partnership at the start of the trial, weakening Musk's related claim that those agreements should be voided. Despite the scope of Musk's demands, experts say a forced return to nonprofit status is unlikely. "OpenAI has signed contracts with Microsoft, Nvidia and hundreds of vendors," said Noah Kenney, head of tech advisory firm Digital 520. "It has employees holding equity and billions in committed investor capital. You can't simply unwind a public benefit corporation that two state attorneys general already approved." Even if Musk prevails, Kenney said the most likely outcome is financial damages awarded to the nonprofit, not a restructuring. Still, the case could have lasting implications. Future A.I. startups that begin as nonprofits may face greater scrutiny over governance and mission alignment. "The trial doesn't pause the technology," Kenney said. "It changes how the companies behind it are structured. That's the real ripple effect."

In OpenAI trial, former technology chief says Sam Altman sowed 'chaos,' distrust among top executives - The Economic Times

A former OpenAI executive testified that CEO Sam Altman created distrust among leaders. This testimony emerged during Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI. Musk claims the company abandoned its nonprofit goals. The trial could significantly impact the future of artificial intelligence development and deployment.A former OpenAI technology chief testified on Wednesday in Elon Musk's lawsuit that CEO Sam Altman sowed distrust among top executives as the company forged ahead with developing and broadly deploying its powerful artificial intelligence software. "My concern was about Sam saying one thing to one person and completely the opposite to another person," said Mira Murati, who was briefly CEO of OpenAI after its board temporarily forced out Altman in ⁠2023. She ⁠said Altman was "creating chaos" and, at times, was deceptive with her and others. Murati's recorded testimony was played in Oakland, California, federal court, in the second week of a trial. Musk, the world's richest person, sued OpenAI in 2024 on the grounds that it improperly became a for-profit company, abandoned charitable goals and should turn back into a nonprofit. If successful, Musk could benefit by hindering the commercial ambitions of a competitor to his own startup xAI, which is now part of SpaceX Musk seeking $150 billion in damages The trial could ⁠determine the future of OpenAI, which, as a leading AI firm, has tremendous influence over development of the advanced software and its deployment into schools, government agencies and businesses. Musk, a cofounder ⁠of OpenAI, is seeking $150 billion in damages to be paid by OpenAI and investor Microsoft to benefit the startup's charitable arm. Murati, who left OpenAI and has co-founded her own AI startup, said Altman pitted executives against one another and undermined her role as technology chief. But she said she wanted him to remain CEO, and pressed board members for a fuller justification for ousting him in 2023. "OpenAI was at catastrophic risk of falling apart," Murati said. "I was concerned about the company completely blowing up." Concern about ChatGPT release Another former OpenAI official, onetime board member Shivon Zilis, hinted at some of the turmoil as the company prepared for the blockbuster release of chatbot ChatGPT. She said the board "voiced extreme concern" about releasing ChatGPT "without any semblance of board communication." Asked whether she raised ⁠concerns about Altman internally, Zilis said "there had been a couple of instances." Zilis now works for Musk's Neuralink. She is also the mother of four of his children. Testimony from Musk, OpenAI President Greg Brockman and others has sketched out a series of conflicts among senior executives and founders about how to drive and support growth of the company and whether Musk, whose early funding was crucial to launching the startup, should become CEO. The trial has also brought surprises to light. Musk, for instance, attempted to settle with Brockman days before the trial began, and at one point felt like "a fool" for continuing to fund OpenAI.

In OpenAI Trial, Former Technology Chief Says Altman Sowed 'Chaos,' Distrust Among Top Executives

By Greg Bensinger and Juby Babu SAN FRANCISCO, May 6 (Reuters) - ⁠A ⁠former technology chief for OpenAI testified ⁠in a video on Wednesday that CEO Sam Altman sowed distrust among top executives and persistent chaos as the company forged ahead with developing and broadly deploying its powerful artificial intelligence software. "My concern was about Sam saying one thing to one person and completely the opposite to another person," said Mira Murati, who was ⁠briefly CEO of ⁠OpenAI herself after Altman was temporarily forced out by the board of directors. Altman, she said in recorded testimony in federal court in Oakland, California, was "creating chaos" and, at times, was deceptive with her and others. Murati's testimony came during the second week in court after billionaire Elon Musk sued OpenAI in 2024 on the grounds that it improperly became a for-profit company, abandoned charitable goals and should ⁠turn back ⁠into a nonprofit. If successful, ⁠Musk could benefit by hindering the commercial ambitions of a competitor to his own startup xAI, which is now part of SpaceX MUSK SEEKING $150 BILLION ⁠IN DAMAGES The trial could determine the future of OpenAI, which, as a leading AI firm, has tremendous influence over development of the advanced software and its deployment into schools, government agencies and businesses. Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI, is seeking $150 billion in damages to be paid by OpenAI and investor Microsoft to benefit the ⁠startup's charitable arm. Murati affirmed under questioning that Altman pitted executives against one another and undermined ⁠her in her role as technology chief. But, she said, she wished him to continue as CEO and pressed board members for a fuller explanation of why they had ousted Altman in November 2023. "OpenAI was at catastrophic risk of falling apart," said Murati, who has since left OpenAI and co-founded her own AI startup. "I was concerned about the company completely blowing up." After nearly two weeks of trial, testimony from Musk, OpenAI President Greg Brockman and others has sketched out a series of conflicts among senior executives and founders about how to drive and ⁠support growth of the ChatGPT maker and whether Musk, whose early funding was crucial to launch the startup, should become CEO. The proceedings have also brought to light some surprising details. Musk, for instance, attempted to settle with Brockman days before the trial began; and Musk, the world's richest man, said he felt at one point like "a fool" for his continued funding of OpenAI. (Reporting by Greg Bensinger; editing by Peter Henderson, Rod Nickel)

Sam Altman's Financial Links To Greg Brockman Face Scrutiny In OpenAI Trial As Elon Musk Alleges Betrayal

On Monday, during testimony, Greg Brockman disclosed that his OpenAI equity stake is worth nearly $30 billion, while also revealing additional financial ties to Sam Altman through stakes in Altman-backed ventures and a share in Altman's family office. Greg Brockman's OpenAI Stake And Altman Ties Surface In Court Court records showed Altman granted Brockman an interest in his personal investment fund in 2017, an arrangement that Musk's legal team argues may have compromised Brockman's independence, Reuters reported. "One thing worth mentioning now is that he compensated Greg on the side," Musk associate Jared Birchall wrote in an email presented during trial. When questioned about whether this created loyalty to Altman, Brockman responded, "I don't know I would say it quite like that." Elon Musk's OpenAI Lawsuit Challenges For-Profit Transformation Musk, who co-founded OpenAI before leaving in 2018, alleges the organization solicited his support and donations under the promise of nonprofit AI development focused on safety, only to later restructure into a for-profit powerhouse. The lawsuit seeks to remove Altman and Brockman from leadership, restore OpenAI's nonprofit status and secure $150 billion in damages. Startup Investments Raise Additional Conflict Questions Brockman also acknowledged holdings in AI chipmaker Cerebras and fusion startup Helion Energy, both tied to Altman's broader investment network. OpenAI has countered that Musk's legal challenge is driven less by principle and more by rivalry, particularly as his own AI company, xAI, competes in the same rapidly expanding generative AI market. Previously, during cross-examination, Musk said he knew OpenAI had begun early talks about restructuring in 2017 but acknowledged he did not closely examine the legal specifics at the time. He also contended that OpenAI's for-profit division now holds control over most of the organization's overall value. Meanwhile, last month, it was reported that OpenAI has fallen short of its projected revenue and user growth goals, fueling concerns about whether it can sustain its massive data center expenses. Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Photo courtesy: jamesonwu1972 / Shutterstock.com Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

Why is Elon Musk Going After Sam Altman and OpenAI

Many are not aware but Elon Musk actually co-founded OpenAI in 2015 along with Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and a few others. Musk parted ways with the organisation's board in 2018 as he had co-founded OpenAI with a vision to grow it as a non-profit organisation for developing AI (artificial intelligence) safely for humanity. In a personal capacity, Musk donated millions of dollars to the organisation, but then eventually left as he accused Sam Altman and Brockman for steering the company towards profits. Musk sued for $130+ billion in damages and also asked for Altman to be removed from the company along with the organisation's structure to be reversed to a non-profit. Musk has even referred to Sam Altman as Scam Altman on several occassions on his social media profile on X. The court case between the parties is now in full action. Elon Musk was asked several tough questions at the courthouse by the OpenAI team during the cross-examination on Thursday. During the trial, Musk said repeatedly that "you can't just steal a charity." More developments on the matter will be posted, so stay updated.

Elon Musk sought settlement with OpenAI before Oakland trial, filing shows - The Economic Times

When Brockman suggested both sides drop their claims, Musk allegedly ⁠said, "By ⁠the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be," the filing, made on Sunday, stated.Elon Musk contacted OpenAI President Greg Brockman to gauge interest in a settlement two days before their high-stakes trial got underway in Oakland federal court, according to a new court filing. When Brockman suggested both sides drop their claims, Musk allegedly ⁠said, "By ⁠the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be," the filing, made on Sunday, stated. The exchange is the latest flashpoint in a lawsuit that has already grown combative inside the courtroom. The SpaceX founder ⁠testified on Thursday that he did not read the fine print of a 2017 term sheet related to ⁠OpenAI's shift from a nonprofit to a for-profit structure, only its headline. Musk is suing OpenAI alleging that its shift to a for-profit structure betrayed its original nonprofit mission to develop safe AI technology for the public good and that the company's leaders wrongfully profited from his charitable contributions. The SpaceX founder is seeking changes to OpenAI's leadership and $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, one of its largest investors. The trial before U.S. District ⁠Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, began on April 28 and is expected to last several weeks, with a verdict possible by mid-May. Altman, Brockman and Microsoft chief Satya Nadella are expected to testify later this month. Musk, his lawyer, and OpenAI did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment.

Musk Sought Settlement With OpenAI Before Oakland Trial, Filing Shows

(Removes extraneous text in paragraph 3) May ⁠4 (Reuters) - ⁠Elon Musk contacted OpenAI ⁠President Greg Brockman to gauge interest in a settlement two days before their high-stakes trial got underway in Oakland federal court, according to a new court filing. When Brockman suggested both sides drop their ⁠claims, Musk ⁠allegedly said, "By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be," the filing, made on Sunday, stated. The exchange is the latest flashpoint in a lawsuit that has already grown ⁠combative ⁠inside the courtroom. The SpaceX ⁠founder testified on Thursday that he did not read the fine print of a 2017 term ⁠sheet related to OpenAI's shift from a nonprofit to a for-profit structure, only its headline. Musk is suing OpenAI alleging that its shift to a for-profit structure betrayed its original nonprofit mission ⁠to develop safe AI technology for the public good and that ⁠the company's leaders wrongfully profited from his charitable contributions. The SpaceX founder is seeking changes to OpenAI's leadership and $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, one of its largest investors. The trial before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, began on April 28 and is expected to last several weeks, with a verdict possible ⁠by mid-May. Altman, Brockman and Microsoft chief Satya Nadella are expected to testify later this month. Musk, his lawyer, and OpenAI did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment. (Reporting by Anhata Rooprai in Bengaluru and Deepa Seetharaman in Oakland, California; Editing by Anil D'Silva)

Elon Musk Testifies He 'Didn't Read' OpenAI's For-Profit Fine Print, Claims Sam Altman Misled Him: 'Can't

On Thursday, Elon Musk told a California courtroom that he backed OpenAI with millions of dollars under the belief it would remain a nonprofit focused on humanity. Musk Says OpenAI Abandoned Its Original Nonprofit Mission During cross-examination, Musk testified that while he was aware of preliminary discussions about restructuring OpenAI in 2017, he did not fully review the legal details, Reuters reported. "My testimony is I didn't read the fine print, just the headline," Musk said. Musk argued that OpenAI's for-profit arm now controls the vast majority of the organization's value. "The for-profit is overwhelmingly where the value is," Musk said. "There's nothing wrong with having a for-profit organization, you just can't steal a charity." $150 Billion Lawsuit Targets OpenAI, Altman And Microsoft Musk is seeking sweeping governance changes, including reverting OpenAI to nonprofit control, removing Altman and President Greg Brockman from leadership and securing $150 billion in damages. OpenAI's legal team has portrayed Musk as motivated by rivalry and control, particularly as his AI venture xAI competes in the same sector. Trial Could Reshape OpenAI's Future Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has limited broader debates over AI extinction risks, focusing instead on governance and fiduciary obligations. The trial began Monday and is expected to continue for several weeks. After more than two hours on the witness stand, Musk concluded his testimony, with his longtime aide Jared Birchall testifying next. Brockman and AI safety expert Stuart Russell are among the upcoming witnesses expected to appear. Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Photo courtesy: Frederic Legrand - COMEO from Shutterstock Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

Elon Musk vs OpenAI trial enters second week

OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman is set to testify in a lawsuit filed by Elon Musk, who seeks to revert the AI giant to a non-profit foundation. Musk claims he was sidelined after contributing significant funds, while OpenAI questions his motives amid his own AI venture's growth. Following high-profile testimony from billionaire Elon Musk last week, one of OpenAI's cofounders will testify Monday in the California lawsuit brought by the world's richest man against the creators of ChatGPT. Assembly Elections 2026 Election Results 2026 Live Updates: Who's ahead in which stateWest Bengal Election Results 2026 Live UpdatesTN Election Result 2026 Live Updates Musk is seeking to force his rivals in artificial intelligence (AI) development to revert to a non-profit foundation. Greg Brockman, cofounder and president of OpenAI, will face questioning from Musk's lawyers on Monday in the Oakland courthouse. OpenAI CEO and cofounder Sam Altman, who in 10 years has gone from being Musk's protege to a bitter rival, is not expected to take the stand until the week of May 11. The outcome of the case could shape the future of OpenAI, the fast-rising generative AI giant now valued at over $850 billion and preparing for an IPO. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, whose company is accused of illegally funding OpenAI's commercial transformation, may also testify this week. OpenAI's legal team asked the judge late Sunday to allow Brockman to show the jury a message allegedly sent by Musk on the eve of the trial, following a failed proposal to settle the case outside of court. According to the request, which was seen by AFP, Musk said: "By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be." Over three days of testimony last week, Musk portrayed himself as a selfless early supporter of OpenAI, saying he contributed $38 million between 2016 and 2020 before being sidelined. The head of SpaceX and Tesla argued that he wanted to counterbalance Google's dominance and ensure that transformative AI technology -- which he has warned poses risks to humanity -- remain free from profit-driven pressures. "You can't just steal a charity," he said. OpenAI's current structure, while highly lucrative, still operates under a nonprofit parent entity. Global competition Last week, Altman and Brockman sat in the front row for almost the entire hearing and made no statements inside or outside the courtroom. The trial has drawn intense media attention, with dozens of journalists covering the hearings daily. OpenAI's legal team has questioned Musk's own financial motives. The billionaire recently folded his AI venture, xAI -- maker of the chatbot Grok -- into SpaceX, which is reportedly valued at about $1.25 trillion and may also pursue a public offering. The stakes are high. If Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ultimately rules in favour of Musk, OpenAI's IPO could be jeopardised. That could reshape the global AI landscape, where major players like Google and Chinese tech firms are competing aggressively. OpenAI is also facing growing competition from Anthropic and its Claude model. While the sector is already generating tens of billions in annual revenue, those figures still fall short of the massive investments required for talent, advanced processors and the construction of energy-intensive data centres powering the AI revolution.

Key Takeaways From Musk's Testimony at OpenAI Trial

May 1 (Reuters) - Elon Musk testified for more than seven hours over three days this week ⁠at ⁠a trial in Oakland, California, over the future of OpenAI, ⁠casting his lawsuit against the owner of ChatGPT as a defense of the institution of charitable giving. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX as well as the world's richest person, is also suing OpenAI's Chief Executive Sam Altman and its President Greg Brockman, saying they betrayed him and the public by abandoning the mission to be a benevolent steward of AI for humanity. Below is a look at key testimony from the trial. MUSK RECASTS OPENAI AS A 'CHARITY' The word "charity" doesn't appear once in the 2015 blog post announcing the formation of OpenAI as a ⁠nonprofit artificial intelligence research ⁠company. But Musk repeatedly described OpenAI as a charity and testified that Altman and Brockman reneged on an initial promise to keep the nonprofit model. "It was specifically meant to be for a charity that does not benefit any individual person. I could've started it as a for-profit and I specifically chose not to," Musk testified. MUSK SAYS OPENAI WOULDN'T EXIST WITHOUT HIM Building an AI research lab requires top-tier talent and considerable computing power. Musk said OpenAI relied on his connections for both. "I came up with the idea, the name, recruited the key people, taught them everything I know, provided all of the initial funding," Musk said. Musk said he recruited Ilya Sutskever, a top ⁠researcher, ⁠from Google while that company's founders Larry ⁠Page and Sergei Brin repeatedly tried to entice him to stay. "After I recruited Ilya to OpenAI, Larry Page refused to speak to me ever again," Musk testified. On computing power, Musk said that OpenAI relied on his connections with Microsoft CEO ⁠Satya Nadella and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. "The only one who could actually call Satya Nadella and have him pick up was me," Musk said. "The only reason he's in this thing is because of me. Those are his words." MUSK SPOKE ABOUT AI SAFETY Musk testified that he learned from discussions with Larry Page that the Google founder lacked concern about AI safety. "I said, 'What if AI wipes out all humans?' He said that would be fine so long as artificial intelligence survives. I said that was insane, that's just crazy. And then he called me a 'speciesist' because I ⁠care about humans more than AI. ... The reason OpenAI exists is because Larry Page called me a 'speciesist.' ... What would be the opposite ⁠of Google? An open-source nonprofit." 'IT FELT LIKE A BRIBE' Musk said he asked Altman in late 2022 about an investment of $10 billion in OpenAI by Microsoft, which Musk described as a "bait and switch" in a text message shown to jurors. Altman responded, "I agree this feels bad." Altman then offered Musk an opportunity to buy stock in OpenAI, which Musk said "frankly, it felt like a bribe." MUSK, ON TRAINING HIS OWN AI COMPANY Musk was asked why he used OpenAI to train his xAI company if he considered OpenAI's model a danger. "It is standard practice to use other AIs to validate your AI," Musk said. Asked why his company was not structured as a charity, Musk testified, "For profit companies can be socially beneficial." 'WE ALL COULD DIE' Musk's cross-examination by William Savitt, a lawyer for the OpenAI defendants, was tense at times. Musk accused Savitt of asking tricky and leading questions, which the judge said was permitted. Savitt was admonished for not allowing Musk to finish ⁠his thoughts. "Few answers are going to be complete especially when you cut me off all the time," Musk said. There was also pre-trial tension when Musk's lawyers wanted to be able to question an expert witness about extinction risk of AI, something OpenAI opposed. "Extinction risk is a real problem. This is a real risk. We all could die," said Musk's lawyer Steven Molo. The judge limited the scope of the expert's testimony and said that she thought "it's ironic that your client, despite these risks, is creating a company that's in the exact space." (Reporting by Deepa Seetharaman, Greg Bensinger, Max Cherney and Kenrick Cai in Oakland, California; Writing by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Will Dunham)

Elon Musk Admits xAI 'Partly Distilled' OpenAI Models: What Do Prediction Markets Say About The Lawsuit?

Elon Musk took the stand Thursday, accusing OpenAI of stealing a charity before he admitted that his own AI startup, xAI, had "partly" distilled OpenAI's models to build Grok. The Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO is suing OpenAI for $150 billion in damages, alleging the start-up betrayed its founding nonprofit mission. Under cross-examination from OpenAI lead counsel William Savitt on day three of the federal trial in Oakland, Musk was asked whether xAI had distilled OpenAI's models. "Generally AI companies distill other AI companies," Musk replied. Pressed for a yes or no, he answered "partly." Distillation, the practice of using one AI model to train another, is banned by OpenAI's terms of service. Bloomberg has separately reported that xAI engineers have leaned on Anthropic models for coding. Musk vs Scam Altman The animosity between the two former co-founders has been hard to miss. Musk has taken to calling Sam Altman "Scam Altman" on X, and is seeking his removal from the OpenAI board alongside a reversal of last year's for-profit conversion. Musk acknowledged on the stand that there was no written agreement laying out the terms of his donation to OpenAI, but argued: "At the end of the day, you can't steal a charity." One of the more telling moments came when Musk told the court "we are not pursuing AGI right now," referring to Tesla's AI work. Savitt then produced an exhibit of a March 4 post from Musk's X account, in which he wrote that Tesla "will be one of the companies to make AGI and probably the first to make it in humanoid/atom-shaping form." Microsoft Caught In The Crossfire Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) is also a defendant in the case. Musk's lawyers argue that Microsoft enabled OpenAI's alleged breach of charitable trust through its $13 billion in investments and its cloud partnership. A jury verdict against OpenAI could force a reversal of the start-up's for-profit conversion and may delay an IPO that could value the company at up to $1 trillion. That would scramble Microsoft's AI roadmap, given the bulk of its commercial AI offerings rest on OpenAI's models. Polymarket Traders See Musk Losing The "Will Elon Musk win his case against Sam Altman" contract on Polymarket prices his odds at just 42% Yes, down a couple of percentage points since the case started. Kalshi's similar market has Musk winning at 55%. Each market has different win conditions, Polymarket has a higher bar for Musk to clear, which explains the discrepancy. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers blocked Musk's lawyers from introducing expert testimony on AI extinction risk Thursday. In doing so, she took a swipe at the Tesla CEO, remarking that "plenty of people do not want to put the future of humanity in Mr. Musk's hands." Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati are all slated to testify later in the trial, which is expected to run roughly four weeks. Image: Shutterstock Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was dishonest, caused 'chaos,' ex-exec Mira Murati says in bombshell testimony

OpenAI's former head of technology Mira Murati slammed CEO Sam Altman as an untrustworthy leader who fomented strife among the company's top ranks -- stunning testimony that was shared Wednesday in Elon Musk's bombshell lawsuit against the artificial intelligence giant. Altman created an environment where OpenAI executives were pitted against each other, creating "chaos" in a way that "undermined" her ability to do her job, Murati alleged. "My concern was about Sam saying one thing to one person and completely the opposite to another person," she said in taped testimony played in Oakland, Calif., federal court. When asked if she felt that Altman was not always candid with her, Murati replied, "Not always." "My issues with Sam were very much around management," she added. The testimony came in the second week of a trial that has gripped Silicon Valley and beyond. Musk's suit accuses Altman and OpenAI's President Greg Brockman of betraying the company's founding contract by putting commercial gain over creating AI for public benefit. The ChatGPT maker has rejected the allegations, claiming Musk actually supported its transformation into a for-profit business. The Tesla titan is seeking up to $180 billion in damages and a court order for OpenAI to unwind its for-profit status. Musk also wants Altman booted from the company's board. In his own testimony last week, he said he'd been a "fool" to trust Altman with the future of the company. After Altman was temporarily fired by the board of directors in November 2023, Murati briefly served as CEO. She has since left OpenAI and co-founded her own AI startup, Thinking Machines Lab. Still, she said in her testimony that she previously supported an effort to bring Altman back as CEO, pressing board members for a fuller explanation for why they'd ousted him. "I realized the board had not followed a process that could be trusted with regards to firing Sam," Murati said. "As we can see in retrospect, the way [board members] handled it caused complete and utter chaos." Murati -- who was seen in a glam dress at Monday's Met Gala in Manhattan -- detailed the chaos surrounding Altman's ouster and how it threatened the company's future. "OpenAI was at catastrophic risk of falling apart," she said. "I was concerned about the company completely blowing up." The exec added that she kept in close contact with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during the tumultuous time. Text messages were displayed showing she texted him asking that he call her to coordinate "how to talk with sam here." Murati called Nadella a "voice of reason," adding, "it was kind of a crazy situation." Microsoft said last month it was no longer paying part of its revenue to OpenAI, the latest in a series of steps to loosen a close partnership between the firms. Murati said competing AI companies - specifically Google and Musk's AI outfits - tried to swoop in to poach OpenAI staff amid the chaos of Altman's firing and eventual rehiring. "Very important we don't lose researches to Demis or Elon," Murati texted Nadella, referring to Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google's DeepMind. Former OpenAI board member Helen Toner took some shots at Murati in a video testimony that was also played Wednesday in court, describing her as two-faced about Altman's firing. "She was waiting to see which way the wind would blow," Toner said, adding that Murati was "not willing to stick her neck out" and implied she was worried about "blowback for her career." The Post's owner, News Corp, has a content-licensing deal with OpenAI.

Elon Musk's Lawyer Questions Brockman Over Nearly $30B OpenAI Stake and Altman Ties

Brockman also said he has a stake in Helion Energy, a fusion startup backed by Altman. Altman stepped down from Helion's board in March because OpenAI and Helion were exploring work together. Musk alleges that OpenAI, Altman, and Brockman secured his donations and support by promising to build a nonprofit focused on safe AI development. He claims they later shifted toward a for-profit model to enrich themselves. The the removal of Altman and Brockman from leadership, along with $150 billion in damages. OpenAI denies the claims and says Musk is trying to gain control after leaving the company's board in 2018. Brockman testified that OpenAI remains controlled by a nonprofit foundation. He also said the for-profit arm operates as a public-benefit corporation, which must consider both its mission and shareholder interests. The trial could shape OpenAI's future structure as it expands across AI products, research, and infrastructure. However, the court's focus remained on whether financial rewards and personal ties affected decisions inside one of the world's most valuable AI companies. Also Read:

Key takeaways from Musk's testimony at OpenAI trial

Elon Musk testified for more than seven hours over three days this week at a trial in Oakland, California, over the future of OpenAI, casting his lawsuit against the owner of ChatGPT as a defence of the institution of charitable giving. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX as well as the world's richest person, is also suing OpenAI's chief executive Sam Altman and its president Greg Brockman, saying they betrayed him and the public by abandoning the mission to be a benevolent steward of AI for humanity. Below is a look at key testimony from the trial. Musk recasts OpenAI as a 'charity' The word "charity" doesn't appear once in the 2015 blog post announcing the formation of OpenAI as a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. But Musk repeatedly described OpenAI as a charity and testified that Altman and Brockman reneged on an initial promise to keep the non-profit model. "It was specifically meant to be for a charity that does not benefit any individual person. I could've started it as a for-profit and I specifically chose not to," Musk testified. Musk says OpenAI wouldn't exist without him Building an AI research lab requires top-tier talent and considerable computing power. Musk said OpenAI relied on his connections for both. "I came up with the idea, the name, recruited the key people, taught them everything I know, provided all of the initial funding," Musk said. Musk said he recruited Ilya Sutskever, a top researcher, from Google while that company's founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin repeatedly tried to entice him to stay. "After I recruited Ilya to OpenAI, Larry Page refused to speak to me ever again," Musk testified. On computing power, Musk said that OpenAI relied on his connections with Microsoft Satya Nadella and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. "The only one who could actually call Satya Nadella and have him pick up was me," Musk said. "The only reason he's in this thing is because of me. Those are his words." Musk spoke about AI safety Musk testified that he learned from discussions with Larry Page that the Google founder lacked concern about AI safety. "I said, 'What if AI wipes out all humans?' He said that would be fine so long as artificial intelligence survives. I said that was insane, that's just crazy. And then he called me a 'speciesist' because I care about humans more than AI. ... The reason OpenAI exists is because Larry Page called me a 'speciesist.' ... What would be the opposite of Google? An open-source non-profit." 'It felt like a bribe' Musk said he asked Altman in late 2022 about an investment of US$10 billion in OpenAI by Microsoft, which Musk described as a "bait and switch" in a text message shown to jurors. Altman responded, "I agree this feels bad." Altman then offered Musk an opportunity to buy stock in OpenAI, which Musk said "frankly, it felt like a bribe." Musk, on training his own AI company Musk was asked why he used OpenAI to train his xAI company if he considered OpenAI's model a danger. "It is standard practice to use other AIs to validate your AI," Musk said. Asked why his company was not structured as a charity, Musk testified, "For profit companies can be socially beneficial." 'We all could die' Musk's cross-examination by William Savitt, a lawyer for the OpenAI defendants, was tense at times. Musk accused Savitt of asking tricky and leading questions, which the judge said was permitted. Savitt was admonished for not allowing Musk to finish his thoughts. "Few answers are going to be complete especially when you cut me off all the time," Musk said. There was also pre-trial tension when Musk's lawyers wanted to be able to question an expert witness about extinction risk of AI, something OpenAI opposed. "Extinction risk is a real problem. This is a real risk. We all could die," said Musk's lawyer Steven Molo. The judge limited the scope of the expert's testimony and said that she thought "it's ironic that your client, despite these risks, is creating a company that's in the exact space."

Inside the Musk-OpenAI trial: Key moments from the billion-dollar legal battle - The Economic Times

Elon Musk is suing OpenAI, alleging the AI company abandoned its nonprofit mission for profit. He claims he was misled about the shift to a commercial model, which he views as a "bait and switch." Musk seeks to return OpenAI to its original purpose and remove current leadership.Elon Musk has spent more than seven hours on the witness stand in a trial that is expected to last a month in federal court in Oakland, California. The crux of the trial? His argument that OpenAI abandoned its founding purpose and became a profit-driven firm. The Tesla and SpaceX chief is suing OpenAI, its CEO Sam Altman, and president Greg Brockman. He claims they misled him and the public by shifting from a nonprofit mission to a commercial model. At the centre of the case is Musk's assertion that OpenAI was meant to function like a charity. "If we make it OK to loot a charity, the entire foundation of charitable giving in America will be destroyed," Musk told the court. 'I created OpenAI' Musk portrayed himself as the driving force behind OpenAI's early days. "I came up with the idea, the name, recruited the key people, taught them everything I know, provided all of the initial funding," he testified. He said he helped bring in key talent such as Ilya Sutskever and used his connections to secure crucial partnerships. According to Musk, his personal connections with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang helped OpenAI gain computing power in its early phase. He also described a fallout with Google cofounder Larry Page over AI safety, saying their disagreements partly motivated the creation of OpenAI as a counterbalance. The 'bait and switch' claim A major flashpoint in the trial is OpenAI's transition to a for-profit structure. Musk said he felt misled when Microsoft invested billions into OpenAI. Jurors were shown text messages in which Musk called the move a "bait and switch". Musk said Altman, back then, agreed it "feels bad", and then offered him the opportunity to buy stock in OpenAI. Musk testified that "frankly, it felt like a bribe." Musk argues that the shift violated the organisation's founding principles. He is seeking up to $150 billion in damages, though he says any payout would go to OpenAI's charitable arm. He also wants the company to return to a nonprofit model and for Altman and Brockman to be removed from leadership roles. OpenAI hits back Lawyers for OpenAI strongly dispute Musk's claims. Their lead counsel, William Savitt, argued that Musk himself supported the idea of making OpenAI a for-profit entity at one stage and later became resentful after losing influence. "What he cares about is Elon Musk being on top," Savitt told the court. OpenAI maintains that creating a commercial arm in 2019 was necessary to fund expensive AI development and compete with rivals such as Google's DeepMind. The company also says its nonprofit arm still retains control over the organisation. Tense exchanges in court The courtroom also saw several heated moments. Musk repeatedly clashed with Savitt during cross-examination, accusing him of asking misleading questions. "Your questions are not simple. They're designed to trick me," Musk said. At another point, he complained: "Few answers are going to be complete, especially when you cut me off all the time." Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers occasionally intervened, urging both sides to keep proceedings focused. She also limited discussions around AI extinction risks, saying the trial was not about the broader dangers of AI. AI safety and contradictions AI safety has been a recurring theme in the trial. Musk has long warned about the risks of advanced AI, telling the court: "We all could die." However, OpenAI's lawyers argue that safety was not a priority for Musk during his time with the company. They also highlighted what they see as a contradiction: Musk now runs his own AI venture, xAI. Musk defended this, saying that for-profit companies can still be socially beneficial. He also spoke about using OpenAI systems to train xAI models, saying it is standard practice to use other AI systems to validate your own AI. Stakes for the AI industry The outcome of the trial could have far-reaching implications. OpenAI is currently valued at around $850 billion and is reportedly preparing for a potential IPO that could push its valuation to $1 trillion, according to Reuters. However, its unusual structure, where a nonprofit controls a for-profit arm, has raised concerns among investors. A ruling in Musk's favour could force major changes to OpenAI's governance and business model. Background: From nonprofit to AI giant OpenAI was founded in 2015 by Musk, Altman and others as a nonprofit research lab aimed at developing AI for the benefit of humanity. Musk invested about $38 million before leaving the board in 2018. A year later, OpenAI created a for-profit subsidiary to raise capital. Since then, the company has grown rapidly, fuelled by massive investments from Microsoft and the global success of ChatGPT. Musk, meanwhile, launched his own AI company, xAI, in 2023. The trial, expected to run for several weeks, will determine whether OpenAI broke its original "promises", or simply evolved to survive in a costly and competitive industry.

OpenAI's Evolution Examined Amid Musk Lawsuit

OpenAI's original purpose has been 'hollowed out', researchers argue. Elon Musk is suing OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, alleging the company abandoned the public-interest mission on which it was built. New research suggests Musk has a point, though the full picture is complex. The article, OpenAI: Governance for Public Good or Private Gain? by Alexandra Andhov (University of Auckland) and Ian Murray (University of Western Australia), traces OpenAI's development. It follows the company from its origins as an incorporated non-profit charity, through a capped-profit hybrid model, to its most recent shift to a for-profit, for-purpose public benefit corporation. When OpenAI was set up, Andhov says its non-profit status was designed to remove the profit motive from developing powerful AI, signalling to researchers, regulators and the public that safety and social benefit would take precedence over returns. "Our paper analyses OpenAI's trajectory from non-profit to possibly a really substantial IPO later this year and shows how their non-profit mission has eroded over time," she says. The paper finds safeguards were put in place at each stage to protect OpenAI's purpose. Yet, those safeguards faced pressure from a small group of key funders, commercial relationships, and the need for capital. As a result, the researchers note a gradual 'mission drift': a shift away from OpenAI's original purpose toward commercial priorities. "In effect, the soul of the OpenAI mission has been hollowed out and housed elsewhere..." - Professor Alexandra Andhov University of Auckland, Business School OpenAI's purpose, the researchers argue, is directly concerned with how AI is developed and distributed, not merely with what 'good works' might be funded from the proceeds. This matters because its most recent restructuring involved a partial shift toward becoming a grant-making foundation, with large sums earmarked for areas including 'curing diseases', raising further mission drift concerns. Andhov points to a 2023 boardroom crisis, when OpenAI's non-profit board fired Altman, only to reinstate him days later under investor pressure (predominantly from Microsoft), as evidence that formal governance powers are only as effective as the board exercising them. The researchers argue genuine independence between those overseeing OpenAI and those running it day to day remains unmet, limiting the ability to resist commercial influence. "The safeguards are there on paper, but they're not strong enough," says Andhov. The article draws a distinction between OpenAI's founding legal purpose, as set out in its certificate of incorporation, and its broader public mission statements. Conflating the two, the researchers argue, has obscured how far the drift from its original purpose has actually gone. The paper points to OpenAI's agreement to supply AI to the United States Department of War as evidence that shifting governance focus toward revenue increases the risk of mission drift. The researchers also argue that OpenAI's conversion in 2025 to a Public Benefit Corporation, which saw it shift its for-profit subsidiary into a structure designed to balance profit generation with its original mission, amounted to "little more than a structural exercise". "The company's founding mission of developing AI for the benefit of humanity has not been preserved within the operating entity itself, but instead quietly migrated to the OpenAI Foundation, a separate body with no direct control over the commercial operations now driving the company toward a public offering later this year, which could reach hundreds of billions of dollars," says Andhov. "In effect, the soul of the OpenAI mission has been hollowed out and housed elsewhere, while the acting company pursues the very trajectory its founders once pledged to resist." Meanwhile, in the Musk vs OpenAI case, lawyers for OpenAI have rejected Musk's allegations, arguing that no promises were ever made to keep the company a non-profit in perpetuity. Andhov, however, suggests the lawsuit may prove more consequential than OpenAI's legal team anticipates. "Beyond governance questions, the litigation could open a broader line of scrutiny, potentially exposing not only the alleged misrepresentations made to early donors and partners, but also significant violations of copyright law and other legal obligations that have, until now, escaped serious judicial examination."

ChatGPT OpenAI Elon Musk trial: From calling Artificial Intelligence firm charity to existential crisis, key takeaways from Tesla boss' testimony

Elon Musk repeatedly described OpenAI as a charity and testified that Altman and Brockman reneged on an initial promise to keep the nonprofit model. Elon Musk testified for more than seven hours over three days this week at a trial in Oakland, California, over the future of OpenAI, casting his lawsuit against the owner of ChatGPT as a defense of the institution of charitable giving. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX as well as the world's richest person, is also suing OpenAI's Chief Executive Sam Altman and its President Greg Brockman, saying they betrayed him and the public by abandoning the mission to be a benevolent steward of AI for humanity. Below is a look at key testimony from the trial. Elon Musk calls OpenAI a 'Charity' The word "charity" doesn't appear once in the 2015 blog post announcing the formation of OpenAI as a nonprofit artificial intelligence research ⁠company. But ⁠Musk repeatedly described OpenAI as a charity and testified that Altman and Brockman reneged on an initial promise to keep the nonprofit model. "It was specifically meant to be for a charity that does not benefit any individual person. I could've started it as a for-profit and I specifically chose not to," Musk testified. Elon Musk Reveals OpenAI Details Building an AI research lab requires top-tier talent and considerable computing power. Musk said OpenAI relied on his connections for both. "I came up with the idea, the name, recruited the key people, taught them everything I know, provided all of the initial funding," Musk said. Musk said he recruited Ilya Sutskever, a top researcher, from Google while that company's founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin repeatedly tried to entice him to stay. "After I recruited Ilya ⁠to OpenAI, Larry Page refused to speak to me ever again," Musk testified. On computing power, Musk said that OpenAI relied on his connections with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. "The only one who could actually call Satya Nadella and have him pick up was ⁠me," Musk said. "The only reason he's in this thing is because of me. Those are his words." Artificial Intelligence (AI) Safety Musk testified that he learned from discussions with Larry Page that the Google founder lacked concern about AI safety. "I said, 'What if AI wipes out all humans?' He said that would be fine so long as artificial intelligence survives. I said that was insane, that's just crazy. And then he called me a 'speciesist' because I care about humans more than AI. ... The reason OpenAI exists is because Larry Page called me a 'speciesist.' ... What would be the opposite of Google? An open-source nonprofit." Elon Musk-Sam Altman Musk said he asked Altman in late 2022 about an investment of $10 billion in OpenAI by Microsoft, which Musk described as a "bait and switch" in a text message shown to jurors. Altman responded, "I agree this feels bad." Altman then offered Musk an opportunity to buy stock in OpenAI, which Musk said "frankly, it felt like a bribe." Musk was asked why he used OpenAI to train his xAI company if he considered OpenAI's model a danger. "It is standard practice to use other AIs to validate your AI," Musk ⁠said. Asked why his company was not structured as a charity, Musk testified, "For profit companies can be socially beneficial." Musk's cross-examination by William Savitt, a lawyer for the OpenAI defendants, was tense at times. Musk accused Savitt of asking tricky and leading questions, which the judge said was permitted. Savitt was admonished for not allowing Musk to finish his thoughts. "Few answers are going to be complete especially when you cut me off all the time," Musk said. There was also pre-trial tension when Musk's lawyers wanted to be able to question an expert witness about extinction risk of AI, something OpenAI opposed. "Extinction risk is a real problem. This is a real risk. We all could die," said Musk's lawyer Steven Molo. The judge limited the scope of the expert's testimony and said that she thought "it's ironic that your client, despite these risks, is creating a company that's in the exact space."

Musk vs. Altman as OpenAI trial begins in California

STORY: The lawsuit pitting Elon Musk against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman kicked off in a California courtroom this week... with Musk testifying for more than seven hours over three days. Here is what we learned from the first week in court: :: Musk vs. Altman Musk is suing the ChatGPT maker, Altman, and others. He says they betrayed him after he gave them $38 million in donations and personal help on the promise they would build a nonprofit that would prioritize safe development of AI. Musk says OpenAI and Altman pivoted to create a for-profit entity to enrich themselves... ...and in testimony cast his lawsuit as a defense of charitable giving. OpenAI has said that Musk, who is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is driven by a compulsion to control OpenAI and is bitter about the company's success after he left its board in 2018. :: Musk's argument Musk said that, quote, "I don't think you should turn a nonprofit into a for-profit," adding,. "There's nothing wrong with having a for-profit organization, you just can't steal a charity." The word "charity" doesn't appear once in the 2015 blog post announcing the formation of OpenAI. But Musk repeatedly described OpenAI as one. He also said, "I was reassured by Sam Altman and others that OpenAI would continue as a nonprofit'... ...and that, 'I came up with the idea, the name, recruited the key people, taught them everything I know, provided all of the initial funding.' He says that included recruiting Ilya Sutskever, a top Google researcher, and using his ties to the CEOs of Microsoft and Nvidia to get the computing power that AI demands. :: OpenAI's response William Savitt, a lawyer for OpenAI, Altman and others pressed Musk on whether he had read a term sheet that Altman forwarded on OpenAI's shift from a nonprofit to a for-profit overseen by a nonprofit. "My testimony is I didn't read the fine print, just the headline," Musk said. OpenAI has said it created a for-profit entity to allow it to accept private investments to help buy computing power and pay top scientists. Savitt's cross-examination of Musk was tense at times. Musk attacked the lawyer saying, "Your questions are not simple. They're designed to trick me." On Wednesday, Savitt said their side was pleased with Musk's testimony. 'It is true that it's a challenge for a trial lawyer to get testimony from a reluctant witness, which is what I think we had. But I think plenty enough came through to make clear that the pieces of the evidentiary puzzle are as we have described them and not as how Mr. Musk has described them.' :: What's next Altman is expected to take the stand in his defense as Musk seeks $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, one of its largest investors, with proceeds going to OpenAI's charitable arm. Musk also wants OpenAI to revert to being a nonprofit, with Altman removed from the board and the CEO job.

Key takeaways from Musk's testimony at OpenAI trial

May 1 (Reuters) - Elon Musk testified for more than seven hours over three days this week at a trial in Oakland, California, over the future of OpenAI, casting his lawsuit against the owner of ChatGPT as a defense of the institution of charitable giving. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX as well as the world's richest person, is also suing OpenAI's Chief Executive Sam Altman and its President Greg Brockman, saying they betrayed him and the public by abandoning the mission to be a benevolent steward of AI for humanity. The word "charity" doesn't appear once in the 2015 blog post announcing the formation of OpenAI as a nonprofit artificial intelligence research company. But Musk repeatedly described OpenAI as a charity and testified that Altman and Brockman reneged on an initial promise to keep the nonprofit model. "It was specifically meant to be for a charity that does not benefit any individual person. I could've started it as a for-profit and I specifically chose not to," Musk testified. MUSK SAYS OPENAI WOULDN'T EXIST WITHOUT HIM Building an AI research lab requires top-tier talent and considerable computing power. Musk said OpenAI relied on his connections for both. "I came up with the idea, the name, recruited the key people, taught them everything I know, provided all of the initial funding," Musk said. Musk said he recruited Ilya Sutskever, a top researcher, from Google while that company's founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin repeatedly tried to entice him to stay. "After I recruited Ilya to OpenAI, Larry Page refused to speak to me ever again," Musk testified. On computing power, Musk said that OpenAI relied on his connections with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. "The only one who could actually call Satya Nadella and have him pick up was me," Musk said. "The only reason he's in this thing is because of me. Those are his words." MUSK SPOKE ABOUT AI SAFETY Musk testified that he learned from discussions with Larry Page that the Google founder lacked concern about AI safety. "I said, 'What if AI wipes out all humans?' He said that would be fine so long as artificial intelligence survives. I said that was insane, that's just crazy. And then he called me a 'speciesist' because I care about humans more than AI. ... The reason OpenAI exists is because Larry Page called me a 'speciesist.' ... What would be the opposite of Google? An open-source nonprofit." 'IT FELT LIKE A BRIBE' Musk said he asked Altman in late 2022 about an investment of $10 billion in OpenAI by Microsoft, which Musk described as a "bait and switch" in a text message shown to jurors. Altman responded, "I agree this feels bad." Altman then offered Musk an opportunity to buy stock in OpenAI, which Musk said "frankly, it felt like a bribe." MUSK, ON TRAINING HIS OWN AI COMPANY Musk was asked why he used OpenAI to train his xAI company if he considered OpenAI's model a danger. "It is standard practice to use other AIs to validate your AI," Musk said. Asked why his company was not structured as a charity, Musk testified, "For profit companies can be socially beneficial." 'WE ALL COULD DIE' Musk's cross-examination by William Savitt, a lawyer for the OpenAI defendants, was tense at times. Musk accused Savitt of asking tricky and leading questions, which the judge said was permitted. Savitt was admonished for not allowing Musk to finish his thoughts. "Few answers are going to be complete especially when you cut me off all the time," Musk said. There was also pre-trial tension when Musk's lawyers wanted to be able to question an expert witness about extinction risk of AI, something OpenAI opposed. "Extinction risk is a real problem. This is a real risk. We all could die," said Musk's lawyer Steven Molo. The judge limited the scope of the expert's testimony and said that she thought "it's ironic that your client, despite these risks, is creating a company that's in the exact space." (Reporting by Deepa Seetharaman, Greg Bensinger, Max Cherney and Kenrick Cai in Oakland, California; Writing by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Will Dunham)

Musk tried to control OpenAI and nearly hit us, says Greg Brockman in court

Brockman said Musk dismissed early AI models and raised concerns about his approach to AI leadership. The legal battle between Elon Musk and Sam Altman has taken a new turn as the tense moment from the early days of OpenAI has come to light during an ongoing legal battle. During the trial that's going on in a courtroom in Oakland, Greg Brockman co-founder of OpenAI brough up a heated 2017 meeting that nearly turned physical. His testimony pointed to disagreements over control, leadership approach, and the long-term vision for artificial intelligence. The case also raises wider questions about OpenAI's shift from a non-profit model to a profit-driven structure, an issue that Musk has challenged in court as being against its founding purpose. Speaking before a federal jury, Brockman said tensions rose sharply after he rejected Musk's proposal to take greater control of the company. He recalled feeling alarmed by Musk's sudden change in behaviour. According to Brockman, the situation escalated so quickly that he briefly feared a physical confrontation. Musk had been an early supporter of OpenAI, backing its mission when it was launched in 2015. Also read: Google Pixel 11 Pro series may ditch temperature sensor for new Pixel Glow feature Furthermore, the legal battle concerns how Musk feels about the change in direction from non-profit towards profit of the OpenAI company. Musk is claiming that such behaviour does not align with the initial purpose of helping mankind. He has brought a lawsuit in court in an attempt to revert things back to normal. Brockman also shared concerns raised within the founding team at the time. He suggested that Musk lacked patience and did not fully understand the long-term challenges of artificial intelligence. Referring to co-founder Ilya Sutskever, Brockman said there was a belief that Musk would not spend enough time learning the technology in depth. Also read: Google may launch AI Ultra Lite plan to bridge gap between Pro and Ultra tiers Another point raised during the hearing involved Musk's early reaction to an AI system that later evolved into ChatGPT. Brockman said Musk dismissed it as weak and claimed that even children online could do better. These remarks, he added, increased doubts within the team about Musk's leadership in AI development. The testimony also touched on personal gestures. Brockman claimed Musk gifted Tesla cars to some team members, including himself and Sutskever, during discussions about equity in the company's for-profit arm. He said the timing made the gesture feel like an attempt to gain influence. The case continues to raise larger questions about how AI companies should balance public interest with business goals.

Elon Musk vs OpenAI: Greg Brockman answered every question in court but skipped this one

Elon Musk vs OpenAI: One of the biggest AI lawsuits is already in the proceedings in the US court. Both Elon Musk and Sam Altman, along with OpenAI's Greg Brockman, have appeared in front of the court. While the case has made many headlines, it has gathered attention once again, and this time for Greg Brockman's testimony, not for what he said, but for what he did. During the cross-examination, Musk's legal team pressed Brockman on multiple aspects of OpenAI, including the shift toward a for-profit structure, his financial interests, and internal decision-making. For the most part, Brockman engaged actively, often challenging phrasing, seeking context, and offering detailed responses, at times even debating specific wording used in the questions. Also read: OpenAI says Elon Musk sent threatening texts before trial after failed settlement bid However, when asked a direct question about his personal wealth and why he had not redirected a portion of it to OpenAI's non-profit arm, Brockman did not provide a clear answer. Instead, he pivoted to generic explanations about the company's structure and valuation, leading to repeated follow-ups from the opposing counsel. Even after multiple attempts, the question remained unresolved. The exchange came along with the presentation of Brockman's past notes, which were used to highlight early discussions around OpenAI's transition from a non-profit to a for-profit model. Musk's team argued that these records pointed to financial motivations within the leadership, while Brockman maintained a more measured stance during testimony. The court also examined Brockman's ties to Sam Altman and his involvement with companies that have business dealings with OpenAI. Meanwhile, Brockman described the company's founding as a joint effort with Altman, suggesting Musk became more involved at a later stage. It remains to be seen how this case turns out.

OpenAI says Elon Musk sent threatening texts before trial after failed settlement bid

Brockman suggested that both sides drop their lawsuits altogether. The courtroom battle between Elon Musk and OpenAI has begun, and new details reveal that things got heated before the trial began. A new legal filing claims Musk tried to settle the dispute, but followed it up with a warning. According to the filing, Musk contacted OpenAI's president Greg Brockman just two days before the trial kicked off. He proposed that OpenAI should settle the case. Brockman responded by suggesting that both sides drop their lawsuits altogether. However, what followed was not expected as Musk allegedly replied, 'By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be.' Also read: After Tim Cook, John Ternus era may change how Apple spends billions The claims are part of a filing submitted by OpenAI's legal team. The actual messages were not attached, and the filing mainly tried to convince the judge to allow the exchange as evidence. That request was denied, with the judge ruling the texts inadmissible. After OpenAI made the alleged messages public, observers began questioning whether the case is purely about AI safety or also about rivalry and financial stakes, a point OpenAI raises in its countersuit (via TechCrunch). Also read: Meta acquires robotics AI startup to boost its humanoid tech vision Musk has filed the lawsuit against OpenAI, along with its CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman. He argues that the organisation he helped start was built on a promise to develop AI for public good, not profit. According to Musk, that promise was broken when OpenAI created a for-profit arm and accepted major funding from Microsoft. He believes this shift goes against the company's original mission. Musk is seeking damages estimated between $134 billion and $150 billion. He has stated that any awarded amount should go to OpenAI's charitable arm, not to him. He is also asking for leadership and structural changes, including removing Sam Altman as CEO and restoring OpenAI's non-profit status.