Most of what we see of Elon Musk and Sam Altman, the two most powerful men in Silicon Valley, comes in the form of carefully chosen personas.
Mr. Musk, who prefers to dress in all black, is associated with rockets, homemade flamethrowers and even a .50 sniper rifle. Mr. Altman focuses on the atmosphere of elder statesmen, posing for portraits as a sort of heir to Steve Jobs. It turns out that tech billionaires care about how the public sees them.
But the disgusting trial between the two gave a different perspective on them. For the past two weeks, I’ve spent hours on the fourth floor of the Ronald V. Dellums federal courthouse in Oakland, California, lurking on Mr. Musk and Mr. Altman as they clash in a defamation lawsuit over the artificial intelligence company they co-founded, OpenAI.
Mr. Musk’s lawsuit against Mr. Altman is important, with billions of dollars at stake and the future of the artificial intelligence industry. But the case matters for another reason: It provided an up-close and personal look at how two men worth more than $670 billion combined operate under extreme pressure.
Mr Musk, 54, appeared to have brought a squeezable stress ball with him, clutching it and fidgeting during his testimony. Mr. Altman, 41, locked eyes with others at times as he walked from the private witness area into the courtroom. (Mr. Musk tends to stare at the floor.) And OpenAI’s president, Greg Brockman, 38, was surprisingly tall in person, almost always accompanied by his wife, Anna.
Think of the trial this way: It was like seeing The Wizard of Oz after Dorothy’s cairn terrier Toto, reveals him.
“The traditional way technology executives operate is to insulate themselves from being seen as ordinary people by building vast armies of minders, public relations staff and organizational processes to create a completely manufactured image,” said Dex Hunter-Torricke, founder of the Center for Tomorrow, a nonprofit focused on the societal issues that could arise from artificial intelligence.
In his 2024 lawsuit, Mr. Musk accused OpenAI of using his money and breaching a contract to establish a non-profit organization that prioritizes the public good over commercial interests. OpenAI says the lawsuit is frivolous and aimed at slowing down the company while Mr. Musk builds a competitor. If found liable, OpenAI could receive $150 billion.
When the trial began the week of April 27, it looked like the circus had arrived. Outside the courthouse, a member of the Stop AI protest group held an oversized cardboard cutout of Mr. Musk in a swimsuit. It wasn’t designed to be flattering.
Another group brought an inflatable “pipe man” — the kind seen outside used car dealerships — with the words “Elon Sucks” in white letters. One woman took a more egalitarian stance with her handwritten sign that read: “Musk vs. Altman: Everyone here to fart.”
Not everyone was hateful. I spoke with some local college students who rushed to the courthouse to catch a respectful glimpse of Mr. Musk. The court made 30 unreserved courtroom seats available each day, and those hoping to secure one had to arrive before the building opened at 7 a.m. or risk being relegated to the overflow room.
One woman dressed in black spent every morning in the building’s courtyard taking selfies while swiping from a pen. She tried to take a photo of Mr. Musk in a courthouse hallway, but was caught by US marshals and then reprimanded by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers for violating the building’s rules against recording. The marshal made the woman delete her photos.
The other participants were clearly there for fun. An elderly gentleman in a gallery once took off his shoes before eating a packed lunch. The marshal finally whispered to him, “You’re not in your living room.”
Mr. Musk and Mr. Altman persuaded the court to let them enter the building through the garage, bypassing the hoi polloi pressed against the glass of the front door. Not all technological elites were afforded the same courtesy; Mr. Brockman walked through the main entrance, as did Shivon Zilis, a former OpenAI board member and the mother of Mr. Musk’s four children.
The tech titans were mostly well-behaved and well-dressed. (Mr. Musk in a black suit, with Mr. Altman and Mr. Brockman in softer blues.) Mr. Musk and Mr. Altman did not interact much, other than occasionally exchanging icy glances.
During his testimony, Mr. Musk presented himself to the nine-member jury as a bold entrepreneur whose primary concern was the survival of the human race. “We want a Gene Roddenberry like ‘Star Trek’ result,” he said of how to develop AI responsibly. “Not so much a James Cameron movie as a ‘Terminator.’
At another time, Mr Musk was visibly frustrated with William Savitt, OpenAI’s lawyer. Mr Musk, who at one point called himself an “extremely literal person”, said Mr Savitt’s questions were “misleading” and “designed to deceive him”. When Mr. Musk responded with a sarcastic response, several younger men in the gallery laughed and appeared to silently cheer for the donkeys.
Mr. Altman, who has yet to testify, was more moderate. He spent the first three days of the trial in the front row of the gallery, alongside Mr. Brockman and Joshua Achiam, whose mandate at OpenAI is to look after the security of artificial intelligence. (It was probably no coincidence that Mr. Achiam sat front and center when trying to address the potential dangers of AI.)
During Mr. Musk’s testimony, Mr. Brockman scribbled pages of notes with a red pen on a legal pad, a habit he began writing in a journal, he said, 16 years ago. Paradoxically, his early career journals were used as evidence against him at trial, which Mr Brockman said in court was “very painful” for him.
Mr. Altman often stared straight ahead and sometimes shifted in his seat, perhaps uncomfortable with Mr. Musk’s glare at OpenAI or seven hours sitting on the unforgiving hardwood of a courtroom.
Some of Mr. Musk’s allies came prepared. Ari Emanuel, a Hollywood super agent and WME Group executive who is a Musk confidant, appeared as part of Mr Musk’s entourage, accompanied by a bodyguard carrying a green Harrods bag containing two plush, cream-coloured pillows. (Mr. Musk’s cardboard cut-out photo of protesters? It was snapped by paparazzi a few years ago when the billionaire was flying with Mr. Emanuel on a superyacht off the Greek island of Mykonos.)
Mr. Emanuel, who flew in from Los Angeles for the trial, was dressed in the blue windbreaker worn by billionaires at the annual Allen & Company technology and media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. He chatted with reporters in the hallway between breaks in his testimony. Not with me though; Mr. Emanuel ignored my overtures to talk about the case three times.
Most of the witnesses didn’t seem thrilled to be there. Under cross-examination by OpenAI lawyers, Ms. Zilis gave terse answers and added the occasional sarcastic aside. Mira Murati, former chief technology officer of OpenAI, did not attend at all; she was across the country in Manhattan the week her video deposition was played in court The Met Gala.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems. Both companies have denied the claims.)
With about a week of testimony left before the jury deliberates, the carnival outside the courthouse has died down. Spectator lines shortened, protest balloons deflated.
But there is still much to discover. Mr Altman and Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella are expected to testify this week. And last Wednesday, lawyers released a trove of text messages between OpenAI executives during one of the company’s most chaotic periods, when Mr. Altman was briefly ousted by the board in 2023.
At the time, OpenAI’s leaders put on bold public faces. But the texts revealed what happened in private. In one exchange between Mr. Altman and Ms. Murati, who later described an effort to stabilize the company as it faced potential implosion, he peppered her with questions about his chances of survival as OpenAI’s chief executive.
“Sam, this is very bad,” she wrote.
