Dorothy

Musk’s core claim in this lawsuit is that Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman effectively stole a nonprofit, using the $38 million Musk invested to create a private company worth more than $800 billion today. On Wednesday, lawyers for Musk showed video depositions of former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and former OpenAI board member Helen Toner, to raise concerns over Altman’s alleged history of deceit.

Altman follows on the heels of OpenAI’s president, Microsoft’s CEO, and others. Altman, alongside OpenAI president Greg Brockman, is a primary defendant in the trial brought by Musk. Altman, Brockman, and Musk were all part of the initial founding team at OpenAI, with Musk investing up to $38 million in the ChatGPT-maker’s early days. But the relationship between Musk and other OpenAI founders eventually soured, and Musk stepped away from the company, later going on to found his own direct competitor, xAI. In recent years, Musk and Altman have traded barbs and made a slew of allegations against each other, driven largely by Musk’s handful of legal actions against OpenAI, many of which have since been dropped or dismissed.

Musk's proposed case is linked to his past as a co-founder of OpenAI, which was founded as a nonprofit in 2015. Musk alleged that Altman used his financial resources to expand OpenAI's operations before turning the organization into a commercial entity.

The focus on his firing is not just about questioning Altman's credibility. One key question of the trial is whether OpenAI's structure lives up to its mission, and specifically whether the non-profit board can exercise true control over the for-profit. From the point of view of Musk's lawyers, the 2023 episode offers evidence that Altman's influence over the company exceeded that of its board of directors.

According to The Verge, Zilis’ testimony included emails from 2017 and 2018. At one point, she mentioned that it was discussed that OpenAI “switch to for profit in next couple of weeks (woah fast!).” That is apparently an idea that Musk was involved with batting around. In another email, Zilis apparently offered Musk some ideas to kickstart Tesla’s AI efforts. “One was making OpenAI a public benefit corporation subsidiary of Tesla. One was getting Altman as an ‘anchor’ for TeslaAI,” she wrote, which doesn’t seem like the kind of thing someone who is insistent on a company remaining a non-profit would consider.

Musk sued OpenAI in 2024 for making a “fool” out of him after Musk donated $38 million to kick-start OpenAI as a nonprofit, only to later be blindsided when OpenAI created a for-profit arm that he felt gutted funding for the charity while enriching executives like Sam Altman and Greg Brockman.

Even before the trial began, Musk faced longshot odds at securing the remedies he sought. The billionaire sought to undo OpenAI's for-profit conversion and force the removal of Sam Altman and Greg Brockman from their positions on top of the company. There might have been a point early in OpenAI's negotiations with the Attorneys General of California and Delaware where Musk might have had a chance to get his way, but it was clear Judge Gonzales Rogers was deeply hesitant to undo the work of public officials. When Musk filed a request for a preliminary injunction to stop the conversion, the judge said the request was "extraordinary and rarely granted." Developing...