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13 May 2026 (San Francisco, CA) - In brief, Musk is suing OpenAI and its leaders over allegations that OpenAI, Altman and president Greg Brockman breached their charitable trust when OpenAI shifted from its nonprofit mission to include a profit-oriented structure. Microsoft, an early investor in OpenAI, is named as a co-defendant.
We have been following the Musk-Altman slugfest. We do not have a reporter court-side but one of our media partners does, and they send us a wrap-up every night after the day's doings.
All the bad stuff about Sam Altman - what insiders really think about him - has been the big story over the last week of the trial. This past Monday, OpenAI co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever testified against Altman, laying out his allegations of deception. Sutskever testified that Altman exhibited a "consistent pattern of lying," undermining his executives and pitting them against one another. Sutskever revealed to the court that he had spent roughly a year compiling evidence of Altman's alleged dishonesty and poor management leading up to Altman's brief 2023 ouster.
Note to readers: yesterday our industry colleague Doug Austin covered this very well in one of his daily blog posts here.
And so Elon Musk’s lawyer began his cross examination of Altman in court yesterday on Tuesday with a brief question: “Are you completely trustworthy?” Altman's answer? "I believe I'm a trustworthy person".
Musk’s lawyer grilled Altman about accusations of dishonesty from OpenAI’s board members, his investments and his brief, tumultuous ousting as CEO in 2023 - bringing up all the points that Sutskever raised on Monday, plus similar testimony from other witnesses last week.
In contrast, OpenAI’s attorney suggested Musk, who helped create and fund the company, angled early for total control of OpenAI as Altman pushed back to ensure the powerful tech was not dominated by just one person.
And that was a big reveal. Because in a series of documents and emails that OpenAI presented, it was shown that before Elon Musk left OpenAI in a power struggle in 2018, he wanted to merge the nonprofit artificial intelligence lab with Tesla, his electric car company. To make OpenAI "commercial".
Musk and other OpenAI co-founders met several times to discuss the merger. Altman was even offered a seat on Tesla’s board of directors, according to a court document.
But folding OpenAI into Tesla would have eliminated the lab’s nonprofit status, and that, Altman said on the witness stand on Tuesday, was something he wanted to avoid.
BANG! The question of whether OpenAI would be a nonprofit is the key point in this trial that pits Musk against the A.I. organization he helped create.
So while Altman's "trustworthiness" was center-stage for awhile, OpenAI moved the debate to who would guide the development of A.I. - and whether Musk's complaints and the goal of the trial are simply disingenuous. Altman’s two hours of testimony became focused on how Musk wanted to take complete control of OpenAI - and how he repeatedly discussed how to turn it into a for-profit company. Merging it with Tesla was one of several options Musk offered.
Altman testified about his feud with Musk. He said he had become worried that Musk, who provided the early investment money for OpenAI, wanted to take control of the lab. And he described what he called a “particularly harrowing moment” when his OpenAI co-founders asked Musk what would happen to his control of a potential for-profit when he died. Altman said Mr. Musk had replied that the control would pass to his children. “I was not comfortable with that,” Altman said. When Musk lost a power struggle for control of the lab, he left, forcing Altman to find another big financial backer in Microsoft.
And worse for Musk was the testimony of Bret Taylor. He is OenAI’s board chair and he took the stand before Altman. He discussed Musk’s efforts to buy OpenAI’s assets in 2024, which has become a contentious issue during the trial. Taylor said the bid had surprised him because it seemed to contradict the aims of Musk’s present lawsuit. He said the board rejected the bid because it was not in tune with OpenAI’s mission: “We did not feel like it was appropriate for one person to control our mission".
Altman returns to the witness stand today to continue his testimony. Testimony is wrapping up, with closing arguments scheduled for tomorrow, Thursday, May 14th, before the nine-person jury begins deliberations.
Thoughts on the bigger issues:
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