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naddr1qv…456mSam Altman Testifies in Lawsuit Filed by Elon Musk Sam Altman walked into federal court this week not just to defend OpenAI’s structure, but to argue that the real danger wasn’t rogue AI — it was rogue billionaires fighting over who gets to own it.
From partners to rivals: the control question
The roots of Musk v. Altman, as Altman tells it, lie in a simple diagnosis: “Elon Musk has control issues.” In his version of the origin story, Musk’s money always came with an expectation of ultimate authority. Altman testified that Musk ultimately refused to participate in OpenAI’s for‑profit entity because “he was no longer going to invest in any startups he did not control.”
The split deepened as OpenAI’s ambitions grew and cash ran short. After Musk suspended his quarterly donations in 2017, Altman said the lab was left in “a very tough position,” running “on a shoestring” with “an extremely short runway of cash.” When it was time to find more capital, Altman testified that “the only path – the best path that [Musk] saw – was for OpenAI to become part of Tesla,” with Musk pushing for an acquisition that would fold the research lab into his car company and even dangling a Tesla board seat for Altman.
Altman says he read that as a veiled warning: whether or not OpenAI signed on, Musk was “committed to building a stronger AI team within Tesla.” In court, he framed that as a lightweight threat that Tesla would out‑gun OpenAI regardless.
By Altman’s account, Musk’s appetite for control extended beyond his own lifespan. A “particularly ‘hair‑raising moment’” came when Altman asked what would happen to the project if Musk died. Musk floated that “maybe control should pass to my children,” Altman recalled. In an email shown at trial, Altman wrote, “I desperately want to see this work with Elon... but I am worried about control. I don’t think any one person should have control of the world’s first AGI.”
Ultimately, Musk walked. According to Altman, “Musk resigned because he had lost confidence in OpenAI ‘and did not believe we were going to be successful.’” He “didn’t want to be associated with something he couldn’t control and didn’t think would succeed,” and he wanted a free hand to build AI at Tesla without conflicts.
Fracturing ties: Zilis, xAI and the long breakup
The trial record shows that even after Musk left the board, OpenAI tried to keep the relationship from imploding. Altman testified that he kept Shivon Zilis — a longtime Musk ally — on the OpenAI board in part “to try to keep friendly relations with Musk,” even after learning in 2022 that Musk was the father of her children and was more involved than originally disclosed.
Not all of those interactions were hostile. Altman described one session with Musk and Zilis about for‑profit plans as unusually smooth: “Unlike a lot of other meetings with Mr. Musk, this was a good vibes meeting,” he said — defined as a long conversation of Musk “showing us memes on his phone.” Zilis later texted that she was glad Musk had time to mull “the investment thing so it won’t irk him later.”
But by 2023, any residual goodwill was gone. OpenAI’s ChatGPT moment hit, and Altman told the court 2023 was “the beginning of the inflection.” The company realized “we would need a lot more compute” for both research and public use, and began raising what Altman says is now “approximately $175 billion” in investment commitments.
Around that time, Zilis resigned from the board, Musk launched his rival lab xAI, and, according to Altman, there were “a lot of efforts to recruit our employees” as well as “negative tactics from Mr. Musk toward us.”
Altman admitted he “was annoyed” when Musk tried to poach OpenAI talent, and described Musk as “a well known figure and known to be fairly mercurial,” with staff wondering if he would “take a vengeance out on us or something.” At the same time, some employees were relieved to be rid of him; Altman testified he didn’t think Musk “understood how to run a good research lab” and that he had “demotivated some of our most key researchers.”
Privately, Altman and his colleagues were also trying to manage Musk’s temper. In one anecdote, Altman recounted that Zilis had diagnosed Musk with “front‑runner‑itis” and even coached Altman on how to engage Musk so he wouldn’t “bash us on Twitter.”
The “bait and switch” texts
By October 2022, Musk’s frustration had hardened into the language that now underpins his lawsuit. In a text chain presented in court, Musk wrote, “This is a bait and switch.” Musk’s lawyer, Steve Molo, pressed Altman on the stand: wasn’t Musk accusing him of “stealing a charity”? Altman, described by one reporter as looking confused, replied, “No?”
On redirect, OpenAI’s lawyer William Savitt walked the jury through what have become known as the “bait and switch” texts. Altman had responded to Musk at the time: “I agree this feels bad — we offered you equity when we established the cap profit, which you didn’t want at the time but we are still very happy to do any time you like.”
Molo tried to frame that message as a kind of payoff — implying Altman was signaling that if Musk let him “get away with stealing from a charity, he’ll split the loot.” The judge sustained Savitt’s objection before the question could land.
Savitt also used redirect to rebut the idea that Musk had been duped about OpenAI’s alliance with Microsoft, saying evidence showed Altman “had made sure Musk knew about Microsoft.” Altman testified, “I would often have to remind Musk of things, but this one I assumed we had talked about enough times that he would remember,” adding that Musk’s attitude by then was that OpenAI was “kind of left for dead.”
The Blip: Altman’s own “Muskian moment”
If Musk’s case paints Altman as a power‑hungry usurper, Altman’s own testimony didn’t shy away from a darker portrait of himself.
Jurors heard about “the Blip” — the internal name for the November 2023 coup in which OpenAI’s board abruptly fired Altman as CEO. All the board would tell him, he said, was that he “wasn’t consistently candid” and they “weren’t going to get into why.” Altman testified that he was “completely shocked” and warned the board that announcing his ouster via blog post would “throw things into chaos.” “If this is the decision, this is a terrible way to execute it,” he recalled telling them. The board told him it was too late.
Altman described the immediate aftermath in almost war‑zone terms: “I was in this like fog of war, I didn’t know what was going on,” he said. People began quitting OpenAI, he rushed to co‑founder Greg Brockman’s house to “figure out a way to stabilize” the company, and he opened back‑channel talks with board members about returning.
Those days exposed the symmetry between the two billionaires. As Ars Technica noted, Altman had his own “Muskian moment” after losing control of OpenAI — seriously considering walking away forever to take up Microsoft’s offer to lead a new AI research group and “get rich.” He testified, “I was extremely angry. I felt extremely misled. I was just like, enough is enough. I’m going to go work on a pure AGI research effort,” sounding “an awful lot like Musk,” who had once threatened to start a competing AI project at Tesla when he wasn’t made OpenAI’s CEO.
In court, Altman put it more plaintively: “I had poured the last years of my life, and I was watching it be destroyed,” he said of the Blip. He admitted he was tempted by Microsoft — “I’m sure I could have made a ton of money and had a much easier life at Microsoft” — but insisted he came back because he “cared about the mission and the people.” Of the board, he added, “I feel badly for the misunderstandings.”
Is Sam Altman honest?
For Musk’s lawyers, the real trial isn’t about corporate forms; it’s about whether Sam Altman can be trusted with the keys to AGI.
“Mr. Molo is going directly in at Altman: ‘Do you always tell the truth?’” one liveblog reported. “I believe I am an honest and trustworthy businessperson,” Altman answered. Molo then walked him through testimony from former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and current CEO Mira Murati, both of whom, according to Altman’s recounting, had suggested he was dishonest. Altman appeared “confused,” “hurt,” and “speaking very softly.”
Molo pressed the point by reviving Altman’s 2023 Senate testimony, in which Altman told Sen. John Kennedy, “I have no equity in OpenAI” and said he was only paid enough for health insurance. In court, Altman acknowledged he had economic exposure to OpenAI through a limited partner stake in a Y Combinator fund and investments in startups tied to OpenAI. When asked why he hadn’t disclosed that to Congress, Altman said, “I didn’t mention it in that testimony, but, again, I think it is well understood of what it means to be a passive owner of many venture funds.” TechCrunch’s summary was blunt: Altman’s credibility itself “was on trial yesterday, at least in the eyes of the plaintiffs.”
Musk’s lawyers also tried to portray Altman as financially entangled in OpenAI’s upside, scrutinizing his role in the company’s startup fund. Altman testified that “he never received any money” from that fund and only “temporarily held the gp position” because, as “the only person on the executive team without OpenAI equity,” giving the role to anyone else would have had “adverse tax consequences.” He said he recused himself from related‑party decisions and left them to independent boards.
On cross‑examination, Musk’s team kept returning to the same theme. “This cross is spicy!” one observer wrote as Molo recited a list of people — including Anthropic co‑founders Dario and Daniela Amodei — who have called Altman a liar or a schemer. Altman “just seems confused,” the account noted.
Style on the stand: Musk vs. Altman
If the facts are messy, the vibes are not. Reporters in the room were almost unanimous: “The difference between Musk and Altman on cross is really stark.” While Musk was “ready to get into a fight over anything and everything,” Altman “has rather mildly answered every insulting question” Molo lobbed at him.
Altman, initially jittery, “seems to be getting into his testimony... and it’s a little catty,” one liveblogger observed, relishing small digs like the “front‑runner‑itis” remark but mostly sticking to a calm, almost bemused persona. By the afternoon, the same outlet concluded, “Sam Altman was winning on the stand, but it might not be enough.”
Musk, for his part, has kept up a parallel court of public opinion on X. In one recent post, he quote‑tweeted a complaint about double standards in how public gestures were labeled and added only two words: “Such hypocrisy.” In another, he amplified a tribute from his mother, Maye Musk, recalling that she “knew he was a genius and a good person” and invested in his first company to “keep them going.” It’s part grievance, part myth‑making — a reminder to his tens of millions of followers that he sees himself, not Altman, as tech’s misunderstood savior.
The lawyers and the larger stakes
For all the drama between the protagonists, nobody walked away impressed with Musk’s legal tactician. “Molo is not doing especially impressive lawyering here,” one account noted, wryly adding that it was “funny that he’s on the team alleging money overrode ethics, because, well, I guess it takes one to know one?” Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers at one point snapped at the Musk team over their attempt to inject AI safety fears into questioning: “What else do you think you want to do? Because you do not want to be held in contempt I guarantee you.”
Against that backdrop, Altman tried to re‑center the narrative on OpenAI’s mission. He described starting OpenAI as so brutal that “if I knew how difficult and painful this was going to be, I never would have tried,” even as he called it “the most meaningful thing” in his life besides his family and said it remained “awesome and fulfilling.” He insisted he is “still enthusiastic about the nonprofit structure,” now one of the largest in the world, and claimed that “Mr Musk did try to kill it, at least twice.”
In one of the more pointed exchanges, Molo asked Altman whether he’d ever fire himself as CEO of the OpenAI for‑profit. “I have no current plans to do so,” Altman replied, adding, “I’ve never thought about it before.”
That, ultimately, is the tension humming beneath every line of testimony. Musk says OpenAI pulled a “bait and switch,” turning a charity into a profit engine for Altman and his backers. Altman says Musk couldn’t stand not being in charge and walked away from a project he then tried to crush or capture. Somewhere in the middle sits a jury being asked a deceptively simple question: who, if anyone, should get to control the future of artificial intelligence?
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Sam Altman Testifies in Lawsuit Filed by Elon Musk
Sam Altman Testifies in Lawsuit Filed by Elon Musk