Altman vs. Musk in Court
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman concluded his courtroom testimony Tuesday in the high-profile Musk v. Altman federal trial, CNBC reported. His central message to jurors was blunt. Musk did not lose a charity to theft. He walked away from one.
Altman Describes Musk’s Departure From OpenAI
Altman spent roughly four hours on the witness stand at a federal courthouse in Oakland, California. He told jurors that billionaire Elon Musk failed to honor funding commitments to the young organization. After fraught internal negotiations collapsed in early 2018, Musk exited OpenAI’s board. Altman testified the departure rattled staff, with some employees fearing Musk might seek retaliation. Others, however, reportedly felt relieved. Altman told the court that certain researchers had been “demotivated” by Musk’s leadership approach. He added directly that Musk did not understand how to run a research organization effectively.
The Funding Dispute at the Heart of the OpenAI Trial
The core of the OpenAI trial stems from a 2024 lawsuit Musk filed against Altman, OpenAI and company president Greg Brockman. Musk alleged the trio broke a founding promise to keep OpenAI operating strictly as a nonprofit. He also argued that approximately $38 million he donated to the company was later directed toward unauthorized commercial activities. Altman denied making any commitment to Musk about locking in a nonprofit structure. He also pushed back on the framing that a charity had been misappropriated. What Musk truly wanted, Altman argued, was full personal control over the organization. Altman said Musk had a longstanding pattern of only engaging with companies he could control outright.
Background: How OpenAI’s Corporate Structure Evolved
OpenAI was co-founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab. Internal debates over how to fund large-scale AI compute led to prolonged negotiations between Altman, Musk, Brockman and co-founder Ilya Sutskever in 2017 and 2018. Those talks explored various for-profit arrangements but ended without resolution. After Musk’s exit, OpenAI eventually established a capped for-profit subsidiary. That entity is now valued by private investors at more than $850 billion. A December 2018 email from Musk, introduced during testimony, captured his dim view of OpenAI’s prospects at the time. He assigned the company a zero percent chance of staying relevant without billions in immediate annual funding.
What Comes Next in the Case
The trial began in late April and has drawn sustained attention across the technology and legal communities. Musk previously testified that OpenAI’s commercial arm had become the dominant force inside the company. Altman’s completed testimony now shifts the spotlight to remaining witnesses and closing arguments as the case moves toward a verdict.
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