Musk Altman trial: Inside the OpenAI legal demonstration<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nElon Musk told a San Francisco jury this week that he donated $38 million to OpenAI in the belief that it would remain a nonprofit research lab where no one, including himself, would ever own stock. He says that this bet cost him a lot.<\/p>\n
Jury selection in Musk v. Altman et al. The trial began on April 27, and Musk took the stand as the trial’s first witness the next day. Their main allegation is that CEO Sam Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman defrauded them into funding what eventually became an $800 billion profitable company.<\/p>\n
“I was a fool to provide free funding,” Musk told the court. He is seeking the removal of both Altman and Brockman, up to $150 billion in damages for the non-profit arm of OpenAI, and termination of the company’s status as a public benefit corporation.<\/p>\n
Musk described donating about $5 million per quarter and contributing $3 million annually in office rent, continuing despite growing unease about the direction of OpenAI. “After I received assurances that OpenAI would remain a non-profit, I continued to donate,” he testified.<\/p>\n
He says he simply concluded that the deal fell apart in late 2022, the same period in which OpenAI’s valuation was rising due to ChatGPT’s explosive growth. A key exhibit shown to the jury: an email from co-founder Ilya Sutskever raising concerns that Musk’s proposed ownership structure would give him unilateral control over AGI.<\/p>\n
OpenAI has quickly pushed back, calling the lawsuit “a baseless and jealous attempt to derail a rival” and pointing to Musk’s own AI ventures, including XAI and its ChatGPAT rival Grok, as the real inspiration. The company argues that Musk himself once sought majority ownership of OpenAI and walked away after being denied.<\/p>\n
Early flashpoints over Microsoft’s investment Musk testified that he initially accepted it, understanding that it was structured to put non-profit interests first and would “disintegrate upon the discovery of AGI.”<\/p>\n
The outcome may inform how OpenAI is allowed to operate and whether its transformation from a non-profit to a fully for-profit structure can continue.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n