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Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, testified Tuesday that Elon Musk wanted full control of the company and pushed for it to become part of Tesla before leaving the startup he helped found.
Mr. Altman’s testimony, coming in the third week of a successful trial in Oakland, Calif., aimed to hammer home Mr. Musk’s claim that no one should control the future of artificial intelligence and show that the billionaire was on board with pushing OpenAI into a commercial enterprise.
Mr Altman defended himself and his company against accusations by Mr Musk, who co-founded OpenAI, that the start-up had betrayed its founding mission as a non-profit organization dedicated to creating artificial intelligence that is safe for the world. After Mr. Musk left the company following a power struggle in 2017, Mr. Altman joined OpenAI as a for-profit company and raised billions of dollars from investors.
That decision – which helped kick-start the global AI boom with the launch of ChatGPT – is at the heart of Mr Musk’s case.
“It’s not OK to steal from charity,” Mr. Musk said during his first day on the stand last month.
On Tuesday, Mr. Altman disputed that view. “I find it hard to even wrap my head around the framing,” he said.
Mr. Musk’s team tried to paint Mr. Altman as a slippery operator who says different things to different people. In a tense cross-examination that drew gasps from the courtroom, Mr. Musk’s lead lawyer, Steven Molo, attacked Mr. Altman’s credibility, with the executive responding quietly and curtly. At one point, Mr. Molo asked him directly, “Are you completely trustworthy?”
“I believe so,” Mr. Altman replied.
Mr. Musk’s legal team called a number of high-profile witnesses during the first two weeks of the trial, including Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft; Greg Brockman, president and co-founder of OpenAI; and Shivon Zilis, Mr Musk’s business partner and the mother of his four children. Mr Musk fell victim to bait after he funded a non-profit, his legal team claimed.
Now it’s OpenAI’s turn. Lawyers for the start-up have already argued that Mr Musk’s case is “sour grapes”. They said the timing of Mr. Musk’s lawsuit, filed in 2024, years after OpenAI first began commercial investment, was intended to benefit his own artificial intelligence start-up, xAI. During cross-examination of witnesses, OpenAI’s attorney sought to show that Mr. Musk had also repeatedly tried to turn the AI lab into a for-profit company.
Mr. Altman has a lot at stake. Mr. Musk is seeking more than $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, OpenAI’s primary partner, and said any damages would be shared with the nonprofit OpenAI. It is also asking the court to remove Mr. Altman from the start-up’s board and halt the shift the company has recently made to operate as a for-profit company.
If Mr. Musk loses, Mr. Altman would likely consolidate control of OpenAI, which is now valued at about $730 billion. And the company would be free to press ahead with a data center expansion plan that could cost hundreds of billions of dollars as the AI startup appears headed for one of the largest initial public offerings in history.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems. Both companies have denied the suit’s claims.)
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Main Bets: The result of the experiment could change the AI landscape. A win for Mr. Musk, who has his own for-profit xAI lab, would also be a win for OpenAI’s rivals, including industry giants like Google and young companies like Anthropic, as well as international rivals like China’s DeepSeek.
Trial logistics: Closing arguments are expected as early as this week, followed by jury deliberations. If the jury finds in Mr. Musk’s favor, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers — who also oversaw a high-profile lawsuit against Apple over its control of the App Store — will decide on monetary damages and other remedies.
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