{"id":23020,"date":"2026-05-16T00:12:48","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T00:12:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/16\/musk-v-altman-week-3\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T00:12:48","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T00:12:48","slug":"musk-v-altman-week-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/16\/musk-v-altman-week-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Musk v. Altman week 3: Musk and Altman traded blows over each other\u2019s credibility. Now the jury will pick a side."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

In the final week of the Musk v. Altman<\/em> trial, lawyers traded blows over Elon Musk\u2019s and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman\u2019s credibility. Altman was grilled on his alleged history of lying<\/a> and self-dealing<\/a> involving companies that do business with OpenAI. But he fired back, painting Musk as a power-seeker who wanted to control the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI)\u2014powerful AI that can compete with humans on most cognitive tasks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As evidence of their commitment to AI safety, OpenAI brought out a golden trophy<\/a> of a donkey\u2019s ass that was gifted to an employee after he was called a \u201cjackass\u201d for standing up to Musk\u2019s plans to race toward AGI.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lawyers for both sides also presented their closing arguments, floating unflattering mugshot-style photos of Musk and Altman next to each other on a giant screen. Musk\u2019s lawyer Steven Molo argued that Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman broke their promise to use money Musk donated to maintain OpenAI as a nonprofit that develops AI for the benefit of humanity. Instead, they created a for-profit subsidiary that made them extraordinarily wealthy.<\/p>\n

OpenAI\u2019s lawyer Sarah Eddy argued that Altman and Brockman never promised to keep OpenAI a nonprofit. She added that even though it\u2019s been restructured, OpenAI remains a nonprofit dedicated to developing AI safely.<\/p>\n

She claimed that Musk sued too late\u2014and that his real motive is to sabotage a competitor to his own AI company, xAI, which he launched in 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Musk is asking the court to unwind the 2025 restructuring that converted OpenAI\u2019s for-profit subsidiary into a public benefit corporation and to remove Altman and Brockman from their roles. He is also seeking as much as $134 billion<\/a> in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, to be awarded to OpenAI\u2019s nonprofit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The jury will begin deliberating on Monday and deliver an advisory verdict as soon as next week. The jury verdict is not binding on the judge, who will decide the case.<\/p>\n

If the judge rules in Musk\u2019s favor, it could upend OpenAI\u2019s race toward an IPO at a valuation approaching $1 trillion. Meanwhile, xAI is expected to go public as a part of Musk\u2019s rocket company SpaceX as early as June, at a target valuation of $1.75 trillion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Musk the power-seeker, Altman the liar.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In the first week of the trial, Musk said he was suing to save OpenAI\u2019s mission to build AI safely for the benefit of humanity. This week, Altman denied Musk was a paladin of AI safety and painted him as a power-seeker who wanted to control OpenAI.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Altman told the jury that in 2017, when Musk and other cofounders were discussing creating a for-profit arm, they asked Musk what would happen to his control over such an entity if he died. \u201cMaybe the control of OpenAI should pass to my children,\u201d Musk said, according to Altman.<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s lawyer shot back, grilling Altman on his alleged history of lying<\/a>. He pointed out that OpenAI\u2019s former executives Ilya Sutskever and Mira Murati, and former board members Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley, all testified that Altman had lied to them. In 2023, Altman was briefly fired<\/a> as CEO over the alleged behavior.<\/p>\n

Molo also pressed Altman about his personal investments in startups that do business with OpenAI. Altman testified that he tried to steer<\/a> OpenAI to buying power from the nuclear energy company Helion Energy, a third of which he owns.<\/p>\n

(Last Friday, the US House oversight committee launched an investigation<\/a> into Altman\u2019s potential conflicts of interest. Attorneys general from more than a half-dozen states called for the Securities and Exchange Commission to review them.)<\/p>\n

During his closing statement, Molo put Altman\u2019s credibility on the stand again. \u201cImagine that you\u2019re on a hike, and you come upon one of those wooden bridges that you see on a trail, and it\u2019s over a gorge,\u201d he said. \u201cA woman standing by the entry to the bridge says, \u2018Don\u2019t worry\u2014the bridge is built on Sam Altman\u2019s version of the truth.\u2019 Would you walk across that bridge?\u201d<\/p>\n

Altman, who sat behind his lawyers, looked up uneasily every time his name was mentioned.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During her closing argument, Eddy fired back. Musk \u201cnever cared about the nonprofit structure,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat he cared about was winning.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Musk, though, was absent. Despite the judge\u2019s order that he remain available, he flew to China<\/a> with President Trump.<\/p>\n

Did Altman promise to keep OpenAI a nonprofit?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

During her closing argument, Eddy argued that no testimony or evidence showed any conditions on Musk\u2019s donations, or any promises made by Altman and Brockman to keep the company a nonprofit. \u201cNo commitments or promises were made. No restrictions were placed on Mr. Musk\u2019s donations,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Eddy added that it was evident Musk wasn\u2019t truly committed to keeping OpenAI a nonprofit. She noted that in 2017, he tried to create a for-profit subsidiary and fought a bitter battle with Altman and Brockman to have control over it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was not opposed to there being a small for-profit that provides funding to the nonprofit,\u201d Musk told the jury earlier in the trial, \u201cas long as the tail didn\u2019t wag the dog.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Eddy then argued that Musk sued too late, filing in 2024 after the statutes of limitations on his claims ran out. In 2019, OpenAI created a for-profit subsidiary, under which employees and investors received a capped return on their investment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Musk testified that he discovered OpenAI had abandoned its nonprofit mission only in 2022, when Microsoft was preparing to invest $10 billion in OpenAI\u2014a deal that closed in 2023. \u201cI was disturbed to see OpenAI with a $20B valuation,\u201d he texted Altman after reading the news. \u201cThis is a bait and switch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Musk told the jury that the $20 billion valuation made him realize \u201cthe for-profit is the tail wagging the dog.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 2023 deal was different,\u201d Molo hammered home during his closing argument.<\/p>\n

Is OpenAI still a nonprofit committed to its mission?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

A central question raised in the last week of trial was whether OpenAI remains a nonprofit committed to developing AGI safely for the benefit of humanity. Eddy, the OpenAI lawyer, argued that the nonprofit still controls the for-profit and seeks to \u201chelp AGI turn out well for humanity.\u201d \u201cThe OpenAI nonprofit is the best-resourced nonprofit in the world,\u201d thanks to the for-profit, she added.<\/p>\n

Molo countered that while the OpenAI\u2019s nonprofit nominally controls the company, it does not do so in practice. OpenAI\u2019s nonprofit and for-profit are controlled by the same people\u2014seven of the nonprofit\u2019s eight board members are on the for-profit\u2019s board. The nonprofit hired employees only a month before the trial started and does work only in grant-making rather than AI research.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Molo played a video interview of Altman saying that the nonprofit board\u2019s failure to fire him in 2023 was \u201cits own kind of governance failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re left with this nonprofit that doesn\u2019t have any voice,\u201d Jill Horwitz, a law professor at Northwestern University who studies nonprofits, told MIT Technology Review<\/em>. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t have much money, and OpenAI doesn\u2019t think it has any obligation to fund it. It barely has a staff,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s unclear how on earth the nonprofit is supposed to exercise its duties and control the entire company.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Civil society groups and policymakers have spoken out<\/a> against OpenAI\u2019s restructuring over the years. So has Musk, although his own stake in the AI race makes him a dubious champion for the public interest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe public interest in the nonprofit loses, no matter who wins or loses this trial,\u201d says Horwitz.<\/p>\n

Jackass for AI safety<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Despite US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers\u2019s warning during the first week that this trial was not about AI safety, the issue stole the show again. Throughout the trial, the lawyers from both sides traded barbs<\/a> over the safety track records of ChatGPT (which has allegedly caused teen suicides<\/a>) and Grok (which has flooded X with porn<\/a>).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the last day of testimony, OpenAI\u2019s lawyer Bradley Wilson handed the judge a small golden trophy<\/a> of a donkey\u2019s ass, inscribed: \u201cNever stop being a jackass for safety.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The trophy belonged to Joshua Achiam, OpenAI\u2019s chief futurist. He testified that he\u2019d warned, when Musk announced in 2018 that he was leaving OpenAI to race toward building AGI, that speed could compromise safety. Musk snapped and called him a \u201cjackass,\u201d said Achiam. His colleagues, including Dario Amodei, now CEO of Anthropic, gave him the trophy to enshrine the diss.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want it,\u201d said the judge.
The shenanigans spilled out into the street too. In front of the Oakland courthouse, a protester paraded around wearing a costume of Musk<\/a> holding a bag of ketamine and driving a Cybertruck. Another held a photo of Sam Altman and a poster reading, \u201cStop AGI or we\u2019re all gonna die.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the final week of the Musk v. Altman trial, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}