Sam Altman Takes the Stand in the OpenAI Trial and Goes Directly at Elon Musk

[nihalsari]

Sam Altman testified Tuesday in the ongoing lawsuit brought by Elon Musk against OpenAI, delivering his most direct public response yet to the central allegation that he and co-founder Greg Brockman "stole a charity" when the organization launched a for-profit subsidiary. "It feels difficult to even wrap my head around that framing," Altman said after a pause, adding that OpenAI had "created one of the largest charities in the world" and that its foundation — now holding assets on the order of $200 billion — "is doing incredible work and will do much more." Musk's attorneys have pressed the point that the foundation had no full-time employees until earlier this year, a fact OpenAI board chair Bret Taylor addressed by noting the challenge of converting OpenAI equity to cash, which was only accomplished through the organization's 2025 restructuring. Altman went further on the safety question, testifying that during the pivotal 2017 period when founders debated how to fund the company's growth, Musk's own approach to safety gave him pause — describing a "particularly hair-raising moment" when Musk, asked what would happen to a hypothetical for-profit OpenAI if he died, responded that "maybe OpenAI should pass to my children." Altman said that answer crystallized his concern that Musk's desire for control was incompatible with OpenAI's founding commitment to keeping advanced AI out of any single person's hands, and that his experience at Y Combinator had taught him that "founders who had control usually did not give it up."

Altman also offered the trial's most pointed critique of Musk's operational involvement, testifying that Musk "did not understand how to run a good research lab" and had done lasting damage to the organization's culture by demanding that Brockman and Sutskever stack-rank researchers and take what Altman called "a chainsaw through a bunch." He framed himself as defending the sweat equity of Brockman and Sutskever — the two people actually running OpenAI day-to-day while both Altman and Musk held other jobs at the time. In a moment that undercut the lawsuit's narrative of a clean ideological break, OpenAI's lawyers noted that Musk had been kept informed of the company's direction and invited to participate in the very Microsoft investment his legal team now claims corrupted the nonprofit. Altman recalled that meeting fondly: "Unlike a lot of meetings with Mr. Musk, this was a good vibes meeting," where Musk spent a long conversation "showing us memes on his phone." The trial continues.

[lingriiddd]

Showed them memes on his phone at the Microsoft meeting, OpenAI origin story getting stranger

[lingriiddd]

"Did not understand how to run a good research lab" testimony is personal and pointed beyond what legal strategy requires

[JanEmil]

Musk should just move on. Don't he have the companies he need?

[etfs]

@JanEmil i think he just hates Altman

[JanEmil]

@etfs probably true