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 one among Musk’s attorneys put it) by turning a lot of what was as soon as a nonprofit analysis lab into a company behemoth. (Disclosure: Vox Media is one among a number of publishers which have signed partnership agreements with OpenAI. Our reporting stays editorially unbiased.) For 3 weeks, attorneys on each side deployed an more and more unhinged physique of proof in an try and discredit each males and show they’re untrustworthy and power-hungry.
Musk claimed he was duped into donating roughly $38 million to OpenAI underneath false pretenses, and was suing for $150 billion in monetary restitution alongside main modifications to OpenAI’s management and governance construction. Decide Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers accepted the jury’s resolution that Musk did not convey his lawsuit throughout the three-year statute of limitations, provided 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, that means the catfight may not be over but. However even past the end result, the trial shone an typically uncomfortable highlight on the internal workings of Silicon Valley and the AI business. Listed below are 5 main revelations from the trial.
OpenAI’s board members questioned Sam Altman’s honesty
Musk’s authorized workforce sought to color Altman as a deeply untrustworthy particular person, vulnerable to mendacity to his co-founders, workers, and board members if it meant advancing his pursuits.
A number of former OpenAI workers 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 1 particular person and utterly 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 saved a diary — and he in all probability needs he hadn’t
A few of the extra salacious proof entered into trial got here from a private diary saved 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 incorrect to steal the nonprofit from him,” that means Musk, who co-founded OpenAI and offered most of its start-up funding. “He’s actually not an fool,” Brockman later wrote. “His story will appropriately be that we weren’t sincere with him in the long run.”
Brockman was additionally candid about his private ambitions; “It could be good to be making the billions,” he wrote. He later obtained a stake in OpenAI now estimated to be price about $30 billion.
Shock, shock: Elon Musk is tough to collaborate with
OpenAI constructed a bot in 2017 that was so superior, it may beat high skilled gamers at strategic multiplayer battle sport Dota 2, a serious 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 automobiles, 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 visitors’ insistence that they share management of OpenAI — fairly than cede absolute management to Musk — that “I really thought he was going to hit me, bodily assault me,” Brockman testified. Within the following months, Musk repeatedly pitched having Tesla take up OpenAI, Altman testified. And, in a single “notably hair-raising second,” he mused that OpenAI ought to cross on to his kids.
Musk in the end left OpenAI in 2018 to start constructing his personal competitor. Throughout an all-hands assembly, Musk received into one other tense verbal tussle with Josh Achiam, now OpenAI’s chief futurist, over the race to develop synthetic basic intelligence. “He snapped and known as me a jackass,” Achiam testified. For Achiam’s valor, two OpenAI workers — together with Dario Amodei, who later departed to kind 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 party for preferring people over computer systems. Microsoft — which is called 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, wished to compete with Google because the AI race heated up.
“I don’t need to be IBM,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote to executives, referring to that firm’s decline within the private computing race, in line 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 function 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 numerous members of OpenAI’s reconstituted board of administrators, who now management each the for-profit firm and the unique nonprofit.
By this summer season, Microsoft could have invested over $100 billion in OpenAI, one of many firm’s executives testified. The corporate was awarded a 27 % stake in OpenAI final fall.
Everyone needs to rule the world (of synthetic basic intelligence)
Microsoft. Musk. Altman. Brockman. Virtually 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 could be a particularly consequential expertise. Against this, their very own introspection principally took a again seat to ambition.
“We don’t need to have a Terminator final result,” Musk testified, to obvious eyerolls from Decide Gonzalez Rogers, who tried and generally did not steer the trial away from discussions of AI’s existential dangers. “When you’ve got somebody who shouldn’t be reliable in command of AI,” Musk mentioned, “I believe 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 distinct menace then poised to steer the AI race: Google, which had not too long ago 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 basic 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 actual area,” Gonzalez Rogers at one level advised Musk’s lawyer, in reference to xAI, which has come underneath hearth this yr 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 palms.”
Replace, Might 18, 2026, 2 pm ET: This story has been up to date to mirror the conclusion of the trial.
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