By Samantha Delouya,
Hadas Gold
Elon Musk on
Tuesday testified that his lawsuit against OpenAI and its leaders goes well
beyond one company and into the future of a technology that “could also kill us
all.”
Musk has accused
OpenAI, its CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman deceived him and betrayed OpenAI’s original nonprofit
mission. His lawsuit in the United States District Court for the
Northern District of California is seeking $130 billion in damages from OpenAI
and wants the company to return to a nonprofit structure and remove Altman and
Brockman from its board.
“I have extreme
concerns over AI,” Musk, who has his own AI company, said on the stand in an
Oakland, California courtroom. AI can make everyone prosperous but could also
lead to dire consequences for humanity, he said, which motivated him to start a
non-profit devoted to “safe” and “open” AI systems.
“We don’t want
to have a ‘Terminator’ outcome,” he said.
The trial
threatens to derail one of the world’s largest AI companies – and one of Musk’s
biggest artificial intelligence rivals – as it makes plans to go public as
early as this year. OpenAI has consistently pushed back against Musk’s claims
and says his suit is one based on jealousy and regret.
“We are here
because Mr. Musk turned out to be very wrong about OpenAI. We’re here now
because Mr. Musk now competes with OpenAI,” OpenAI’s lead attorney Bill Savitt
said in his opening statement Tuesday. “Because he’s a competitor, Mr. Musk
will do anything he can do to attack OpenAI.”
The jury’s verdict
will advise Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers as she decides whether Musk gets his
wish: reversion of OpenAI to a nonprofit structure, the removal of Altman and
Brockman from OpenAI’s board, and around $130 billion in damages to go back
into OpenAI’s nonprofit foundation.
Beyond the
remedies Musk is demanding, the trial threatens to derail one of the world’s
largest AI companies – and one of Musk’s biggest artificial intelligence rivals
– as it makes plans to go public as
early as this year. OpenAI has consistently pushed back against Musk’s claims
and says his suit is one based on jealousy and regret.
The battle
between two of the biggest AI pioneers, Musk and Altman, could shape the future of the
emerging, but already wildly influential, technology. OpenAI’s IPO is expected
to be a blockbuster, and the money it raises could help it dominate an industry
in which it had an early lead. On the other hand, if Musk wins, his own xAI
company could set back a major rival and potentially leap ahead.
The trial was
already contentious even before any testimony.
Musk spent part
of Monday posting on his social media platform X about his lawsuit against
OpenAI, its CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman, and Musk’s claims in
the suit that the ChatGPT maker deceived him and betrayed its original mission.
“Scam Altman and
Greg Stockman stole a charity. Full stop,” read one of Musk’s missives.
Rogers scolded
Musk on Tuesday morning for his recent social media posts about the trial and
threatened a gag order before the jury arrived in the courtroom.
Musk’s posts
will “only make things worse,” she said. Musk agreed to limit his social media
posts about the suit; Altman and Brockman similarly agreed.
And Musk could
face other hurdles in his quest. Musk’s lawyers on Monday struck several potential
jurors who harshly criticized their billionaire client, including one who
referred to Musk as “greedy” and a “piece of garbage” in their
pre-questionnaire form and another who said their partner’s job was “harmed” by
the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cost-cutting initiative that
Musk lead in the Trump administration.
“The reality is that people don’t like him.
Many people don’t like him. That does not mean that Americans can’t have
integrity for the judicial process,” Judge Rogers told Musk’s attorneys.
Jurors expressed
few opinions about Altman, who was in court for jury selection. In the end, the
jurors selected were largely those who said they had a neutral opinion of Musk
or of AI.
Emails, text, call logs and more
Musk cofounded
and helped fund OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015, giving what he says amounted to
at least $44 million in its first few years. But he split from the company in
2018 after an acrimonious power struggle. (Musk went on to later found his own
AI company, xAI.)
A year after his
exit, OpenAI created a for-profit subsidiary to raise more cash. In 2025, the
company further evolved into a for-profit public benefit corporation, under the
OpenAI foundation. Musk claims the shift betrayed OpenAI’s original nonprofit
mission to develop safe, open-source AI technology for the public good – and
that the company’s leaders, including Altman and Brockman, wrongfully profited
from his charitable contributions, according to the lawsuit.
Microsoft, which
Musk named as a co-defendant in the case, is accused of aiding and abetting OpenAI’s
breach of charitable trust.
OpenAI, its
executives Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, and investor Microsoft “enriched
themselves, made themselves more powerful and they breached the very basic
principles on which the charity was founded,” Musk’s attorney, Steven Molo,
alleged in his opening statement Tuesday.
In early
discussions, Musk and others talked OpenAI’s structure and whether it should be
a for-profit company, Molo said. Musk stepped down from the board because he
had “stuff going on in his other businesses” when OpenAI struck a deal with
Microsoft that fundamentally meant OpenAI was “no longer operating for the good
of humanity as a whole,” Molo added.
In a motion to
dismiss before the trial began, Microsoft called Musk’s arguments “devoid of
factual specificity and substantiation, repeatedly relying on unsupported
‘information and belief.”
But OpenAI says
Musk himself pushed for a for-profit structure. Musk left the company because
he was not able to assume total control, OpenAI said in a statement, and his
suit is “motivated by jealousy, regret for walking away from OpenAI and a
desire to derail a competing AI company.”
When OpenAI
realized they needed more money for computer power and made plans for a
for-profit subsidiary, Musk wanted to have full control, OpenAI’s lead attorney
Bill Savitt said in his opening statement. When the others did not agree, Musk
left the company.
“We’re here
because Mr. Musk didn’t get his way at OpenAI. My clients had the nerve to go
on and succeed without him. Mr. Musk may not like that, but it’s no basis for a
lawsuit,” Savitt said.
Hundreds of
pages of emails, texts, call logs and documents submitted as evidence will shed
an inside view of the case, both before and after Musk left the company –
communications that, in many instances, take a far different view in private
than public social-media declarations.
In one 2023
email submitted as an exhibit, Altman tells Musk he’s his “hero” but that he’s
hurt by his attacks on OpenAI.
“I hear you and
it is certainly not my intention to be hurtful, for which I apologize, but the
fate of civilization is at stake,” Musk said in response.
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