Friendship breakups are by no means simple, however few are as messy and costly because the collapse of Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s as soon as thriving tech bromance, which has — for now — reached a authorized finish.
On Monday, a jury dominated in opposition to Musk in his lawsuit in opposition to OpenAI, which contended that Altman and different executives “stole a charity” (as certainly one of Musk’s legal professionals put it) by turning a lot of what was as soon as a nonprofit analysis lab into a company behemoth. (Disclosure: Vox Media is certainly one of a number of publishers which have signed partnership agreements with OpenAI. Our reporting stays editorially unbiased.) For 3 weeks, legal professionals on each side deployed an more and more unhinged physique of proof in an try to discredit each males and show they’re untrustworthy and power-hungry.
Musk claimed he was duped into donating roughly $38 million to OpenAI below false pretenses, and was suing for $150 billion in monetary restitution alongside main modifications to OpenAI’s management and governance construction. Choose Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers accepted the jury’s choice that Musk did not carry his lawsuit inside the three-year statute of limitations, on condition that OpenAI first added its for-profit arm in 2018. Nevertheless, it’s attainable that the proof put forth at trial will nonetheless be sufficient to persuade state regulators to revisit the agreements that allowed OpenAI to restructure right into a for-profit enterprise to start with.
Legal professionals inform me that Musk will doubtless select to enchantment the ruling, which means the catfight won’t be over but. However even past the result, the trial shone an typically uncomfortable highlight on the interior workings of Silicon Valley and the AI business. Listed here are 5 main revelations from the trial.
OpenAI’s board members questioned Sam Altman’s honesty
Musk’s authorized staff sought to color Altman as a deeply untrustworthy particular person, vulnerable to mendacity to his co-founders, staff, and board members if it meant advancing his pursuits.
A number of former OpenAI staff and board members testified as a lot within the courtroom. Altman’s “sample of habits associated to his honesty and candor” led on to his momentary ouster as CEO in 2023, mentioned Helen Toner, a former board member, in a video deposition. He had an inclination of “saying one factor to at least one particular person and fully the alternative to a different particular person,” Mira Murati, OpenAI’s former chief expertise officer, testified. In a single occasion, she mentioned, Altman explicitly lied to her in regards to the security evaluate required to vet a brand new AI mannequin.
Greg Brockman stored a diary — and he most likely needs he hadn’t
A number of the extra salacious proof entered into trial got here from a private diary stored by OpenAI president Greg Brockman, who chronicled his “stream of consciousness” as he weighed whether or not it could be “morally bankrupt” to pivot OpenAI right into a for-profit enterprise.
“Can’t see us turning this right into a for-profit with out a very nasty struggle,” he wrote in a single 2017 entry. “It’d be flawed to steal the nonprofit from him,” which means Musk, who co-founded OpenAI and supplied most of its start-up funding. “He’s actually not an fool,” Brockman later wrote. “His story will accurately be that we weren’t sincere with him ultimately.”
Brockman was additionally candid about his private ambitions; “It might be good to be making the billions,” he wrote. He later acquired a stake in OpenAI now estimated to be price about $30 billion.
Shock, shock: Elon Musk is troublesome to collaborate with
OpenAI constructed a bot in 2017 that was so superior, it might beat high skilled gamers at strategic multiplayer battle sport Dota 2, a significant milestone for the budding lab. “Time to make the following step for OpenAI. That is the triggering occasion,” Musk emailed Brockman.
Musk gave Brockman and cofounder Ilya Sutskever new Tesla Mannequin 3 vehicles, presumably to “butter us up,” Brockman testified. The Tesla CEO then summoned them to his self-described “haunted mansion” for discussions of a attainable OpenAI for-profit arm, the place whiskey was served by Musk’s then-girlfriend Amber Heard.
At one level, Musk turned so irate at his friends’ insistence that they share management of OpenAI — somewhat than cede absolute management to Musk — that “I truly thought he was going to hit me, bodily assault me,” Brockman testified. Within the following months, Musk repeatedly pitched having Tesla take in OpenAI, Altman testified. And, in a single “notably hair-raising second,” he mused that OpenAI ought to go on to his youngsters.
Musk finally left OpenAI in 2018 to start constructing his personal competitor. Throughout an all-hands assembly, Musk bought into one other tense verbal tussle with Josh Achiam, now OpenAI’s chief futurist, over the race to develop synthetic normal intelligence. “He snapped and referred to as me a jackass,” Achiam testified. For Achiam’s valor, two OpenAI staff — together with Dario Amodei, who later departed to type Anthropic — awarded him a small golden statue of a donkey’s rear finish, inscribed with the message, “By no means cease being a jackass for security.”
Microsoft cozied as much as OpenAI to keep away from being left behind within the AI race
Musk first funded OpenAI due to one other friendship breakup, this one with Google cofounder Larry Web page, who Musk says mocked him at his personal celebration for preferring people over computer systems. Microsoft — which is known as in Musk’s lawsuit for aiding and abetting OpenAI’s abandonment of its nonprofit mission — later turned OpenAI’s first main company investor in 2019, as a result of it, too, needed to compete with Google because the AI race heated up.
“I don’t wish to be IBM,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote to executives, referring to that firm’s decline within the private computing race, in accordance with emails revealed at trial. “It was changing into much more core and essential that we had actual company at each layer of the stack,” Nadella testified.
That meant ingratiating itself in each nook of OpenAI’s world. Microsoft performed an important position in bringing Altman again to energy after the failed board coup in 2023, which Nadella known as “newbie metropolis, so far as I used to be involved.” In a textual content thread revealed at trial, Altman requested Microsoft executives to vet varied members of OpenAI’s reconstituted board of administrators, who now management each the for-profit firm and the unique nonprofit.
By this summer time, Microsoft may have invested over $100 billion in OpenAI, one of many firm’s executives testified. The corporate was awarded a 27 p.c stake in OpenAI final fall.
Everyone needs to rule the world (of synthetic normal intelligence)
Microsoft. Musk. Altman. Brockman. Nearly everybody who testified at trial pointed fingers at a distinct boogeyman whose motives have been too impure and whose character was too corruptible, to be trusted with management of what all agreed can be an especially consequential expertise. In contrast, their very own introspection largely took a again seat to ambition.
“We don’t wish to have a Terminator consequence,” Musk testified, to obvious eyerolls from Choose Gonzalez Rogers, who tried and generally failed to steer the trial away from discussions of AI’s existential dangers. “In case you have somebody who just isn’t reliable in command of AI,” Musk mentioned, “I feel that’s a really large hazard for the entire world.”
Over a decade in the past, Musk got here along with OpenAI’s cofounders to construct a charity geared up to tackle a totally different menace then poised to steer the AI race: Google, which had lately acquired Demis Hassabis’ DeepMind. Now, like Altman and Brockman, who testified that they resisted Musk’s dictatorial makes an attempt to safe absolute management of synthetic normal intelligence, Musk portrayed himself as somebody selfless and clear sufficient to be put in cost.
“It’s ironic that your consumer, regardless of these dangers, is creating an organization that’s within the precise area,” Gonzalez Rogers at one level instructed Musk’s lawyer, in reference to xAI, which has come below hearth this 12 months for facilitating the mass creation of nonconsensual deepfakes. “I believe there are many individuals who wouldn’t wish to put the way forward for humanity in Mr. Musk’s arms.”
Replace, Might 18, 2026, 2 pm ET: This story has been up to date to mirror the conclusion of the trial.
