Altman, 41, faced Musk’s attorney in Oakland and testified about a 2017 control battle.
The courtroom in Oakland, California has become the stage for one of the most dramatic corporate showdowns in Silicon Valley history. Today, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took the witness stand in the final days of Elon Musk’s lawsuit against the company he leads, and the testimony he delivered was unlike anything the trial had seen before.
Altman, 41, sat calmly as Musk’s attorney worked to paint him as deceptive and ambitious. He stayed composed. But what he described about Musk’s behavior during OpenAI’s earliest days was anything but.
The alarming 2017 push for control
At the center of today’s testimony was a 2017 dispute over who should control a proposed for-profit subsidiary of OpenAI. Musk, then the company’s biggest financial backer, insisted on complete control and at one point sought 90% equity. He told the co-founders he would eventually give it up, but he refused to put that promise in writing. That refusal left everyone in the room deeply unsettled.
The most chilling moment came when Altman’s co-founders posed a direct question: what would happen to all that control when Musk died? Musk reportedly said he had not given it much thought, but that passing it along to his children was one possibility. Altman described that response as a defining reason he grew uncomfortable with the entire arrangement. The founding principle of OpenAI had always been that artificial general intelligence should not belong to any single person. Musk’s proposal contradicted that at its core.
Altman told the jury that his experience with startups had taught him something consistent: founders who hold control rarely give it up, especially once a company begins to succeed.
In terms of financial contributions, Altman testified that he personally gave $3.75 million to the nonprofit at the start, followed by a further sum in equity interests passed to employees. Musk, by contrast, gave approximately $38 million in total, a figure well below the $1 billion he had originally pledged.
What Musk’s attorney tried to prove
Cross-examination from Musk’s attorney Steven Molo opened with a direct challenge to Altman’s character, asking whether he considered himself completely trustworthy. Altman said yes. Molo then cited former OpenAI executives who have accused Altman of dishonesty, including co-founder Ilya Sutskever, former chief technology officer Mira Murati, and Anthropic co-founders Dario and Daniela Amodei. Altman disputed each characterization without raising his voice.
Molo also surfaced a 2017 email in which Sutskever and Brockman reportedly questioned whether Altman’s desire to become CEO was connected to political ambitions. When asked directly, Altman acknowledged that he had briefly considered running for California governor that year, when he was still running Y Combinator and OpenAI was barely known. He did not pursue it.
In a moment that drew a sharp response from the court, Altman suggested Musk had attempted to destroy OpenAI on at least 2 separate occasions. The judge struck those remarks from the record. Altman also revisited his 2023 removal as CEO, which the board justified by saying he had not been candid with them. He was reinstated five days later after employees mounted a public protest in his support.
What comes next as the trial winds down
The stakes could not be higher. Musk is seeking at least $132 billion in damages, the removal of Altman and Brockman from their leadership roles, and the reversal of OpenAI’s completed for-profit conversion. OpenAI maintains that its nonprofit mission remains intact and points to its funding of healthcare research, including work on Alzheimer’s treatments, as evidence.
The company argues Musk’s lawsuit is primarily an attempt to undermine a competitor to his own AI company, xAI. Musk had previously made an unsolicited $97 billion offer to take over OpenAI, which the company rejected outright.
Altman is expected to continue his testimony on Wednesday. Closing statements are set for Thursday, followed by jury deliberation. The jury in this case is advisory: Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will make the final ruling. A Musk victory would trigger a second phase on damages. An OpenAI win could bring the trial to a close as early as next week.