The first act of the trial between Elon Musk and Sam Altman has concluded. The clash between the tech titans will define the future of OpenAI.
The first phase of the process involving two heavyweights in the American tech sector is about to come to a conclusion: Elon Musk And Sam Altman.
In fact, yesterday the final arguments in the trial brought by the magnate owner of SpaceX and Tesla against OpenAISam Altman and Greg Brockman. Process that Musk asks for 150 billion dollars in damages.
The reasons for the dispute
Has OpenAI, founded in 2015 as a non-profit organization with the mission of developing artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity, betrayed its founding ideals by transforming itself into a profit machine?
This is the heart of the battle between the two billionaires, Musk on one side and Altman on the other. For the owner of Tesla, the answer is unequivocal. The tycoon declared before the jury that he had been deceived: «I was a fool who gave them free funding to create a startup», he said, recalling that he had donated around 38 million dollars to what he believed to be a non-profit oriented towards the collective good, not to enrich its leaders.
The formal accusations are on two fronts: breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment. In fact, Musk claims that Altman, Brockman and Microsoft have effectively abandoned the foundation’s original mission, transforming OpenAI into a profit-oriented commercial structure.
A key element of the accusation concerns the role of Microsoft, which according to Musk influenced Altman and Brockman to move away from the nonprofit missionsigning commercial agreements related to cloud services.
In addition to financial compensation, Musk calls for OpenAI to return to non-profit status and for Altman and Brockman to be removed from their leadership roles.
Witnesses brought
The trial saw some of the most well-known names in Silicon Valley take to the stand, including Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, the CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella and Elon Musk himself.
Musk himself testified in the first week, saying he felt cheated. However, his testimony provided more than one surprise: he admitted, causing some shocks in the courtroom, that his own artificial intelligence company xAI uses OpenAI models to train its own.
On the prosecution side, Musk’s lawyer Steven Molo repeatedly cited statements from former OpenAI board members, highlighting a pattern of dishonesty attributed to Altman. Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of OpenAI, testified that he spent months gathering evidence of what he described as a systematic pattern of deception and mismanagement by Altman.
Among the most explosive evidence produced by the defense, however, Brockman’s personal diary from 2017 stands out, in which the non-profit structure of OpenAI was defined as «a lie».
Nadella, for his part, testified that he had never been contacted by Musk regarding alleged violations, adding that he was “very proud” of the investment made in OpenAI.
The consequences of a ruling in favor of Musk
If the jury and the judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers were to rule in favor of Musk, the repercussions on the artificial intelligence industry would be historic.
On an immediate level, Musk has called for OpenAI to return up to $150 billion to the nonprofit component, for the for-profit structure to be dismantled, and for Altman and Brockman to lose their roles.
Such a ruling would have devastating consequences for OpenAI’s growth plans, compromising the company’s plans for what promises to be a historic stock market listingexpected by the end of the year.
