Sam Altman completed his testimony on Tuesday with a line that may prove more consequential than any exhibit, text message or journal entry produced during three weeks of proceedings: Elon Musk, Altman told the jury, expected OpenAI to fail.
The claim, if the jury accepts it, undercuts the foundation of Musk's entire case. Musk is suing OpenAI, Altman, president Greg Brockman and Microsoft for breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment, alleging that his $38 million donation was made to a nonprofit with a specific mission and that the co-founders betrayed that mission by converting the company into a for-profit venture now valued at $852 billion.
He is seeking up to $150 billion in disgorgement, the removal of Altman and Brockman from their leadership positions, and the unwinding of the for-profit structure.
The legal framework requires Musk to demonstrate that he donated in reliance on specific commitments about how the organisation would operate.
If Altman can persuade the jury that Musk viewed his contribution as a speculative bet on a venture he considered unlikely to succeed, the donation looks less like a charitable trust and more like a write-off by a billionaire who was hedging against a future he doubted would arrive.
Altman's testimony across Tuesday and into Wednesday built this argument methodically. He told jurors that Musk wanted "total control" of any for-profit entity from the outset. When the other co-founders refused, Musk left the board in February 2018. Altman described the departure as a "morale boost" for employees who had been demoralised by Musk's management, which included demanding that researchers be ranked against one another and the lowest performers cut.
Under cross-examination, Musk's attorney Steven Molo pressed Altman hard on his credibility. Molo cited testimony from former chief technology officer Mira Murati, former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, and former board members Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner, all of whom described concerns about Altman's honesty. Sutskever had testified that he spent a year documenting a "consistent pattern of lying" before orchestrating Altman's removal in November 2023.
"Are you completely trustworthy?" Molo asked. "I believe I am an honest and trustworthy businessperson," Altman replied. Asked whether he always tells the truth, he conceded: "I'm sure there are some times in my life when I did not."
Molo also probed Altman's financial entanglements with companies that have business relationships with OpenAI, including Stripe, Cerebras and Helion, the nuclear fusion company where Altman holds a significant personal stake. The House Oversight Committee has separately written to Altman requesting information about these conflicts.
Altman described his decade at OpenAI as the "most meaningful thing in my life I could imagine" outside of his family, and said he would not have started if he had known how painful the experience would become. He accused Musk of attempting to "kill" OpenAI twice, once by withdrawing funding and again by launching xAI as a direct competitor, though the judge struck that remark from the record after Musk's lawyer objected.
The trial moves to closing arguments on Thursday. The nine-person advisory jury could deliver its verdict as soon as next week, with Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers retaining the power to decide the case on her own terms. A ruling in Musk's favour could force the unwinding of OpenAI's for-profit structure, block its planned IPO and remove its chief executive, outcomes that would reshape the AI industry at its most critical juncture.
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Neither side has emerged from the trial looking particularly sympathetic. Axios described the proceedings as offering no "clean, reassuring story about AI governance." Cornell University's Sarah Kreps warned that the spectacle is damaging for the entire industry "at a time when the public perception of AI is quite negative and seems to be getting worse."
The jury will decide whose version of events it believes. But if Altman's characterisation of Musk as a sceptical benefactor who never expected OpenAI to amount to anything holds, it becomes considerably harder to argue that the same man was the victim of a carefully orchestrated theft.
The recap
- Sam Altman testified that Musk thought OpenAI would fail.
- CNBC article included a 03:06 video and 2:07 PM EDT timestamp.
- No additional testimony details or next steps were provided.
