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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman finally took the stand this morning to defend himself against his former cofounder Elon Musk\u2019s lawsuit challenging OpenAI\u2019s corporate structure.<\/p>\n
Altman was asked out of the gate what he thought of Musk\u2019s allegation that OpenAI\u2019s other founders \u201cstole a charity\u201d when they launched a for-profit subsidiary to market products based on the company\u2019s AI models.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels difficult to even wrap my head around that framing,\u201d Altman said after several seconds of silence. \u201cWe created one of the largest charities in the world. This foundation is doing incredible work and will do much more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Musk\u2019s attorneys have been at pains to point out that OpenAI\u2019s foundation, which now has assets on the order of $200 billion, didn\u2019t have full-time employees until earlier this year. OpenAI board chair Bret Taylor testified today that was simply because of the challenge of converting OpenAI equity to cash, which was accomplished with the organization\u2019s most recent restructuring in 2025.<\/p>\n
The central question posed by Musk\u2019s lawyers is whether the company\u2019s commitment to safety had been left behind as its commercial power grew. But Altman said that in 2017, during a pivotal period when the founders wrestled with how to obtain the funding to power their AI models, Musk\u2019s \u201cspecific plans on safety made me worry.\u201d<\/p>\n
He described a \u201cparticularly hair-raising moment\u201d in the debate when Musk was asked what would happen if he died while controlling a hypothetical OpenAI for-profit. In Altman\u2019s telling, Musk said \u201cmaybe OpenAI should pass to my children.\u201d <\/p>\n
Altman said that Musk\u2019s focus on controlling the initial for-profit gave him pause because OpenAI was dedicated to keeping advanced AI out of the hands of a single person, and Altman, with his experience running the prominent startup accelerator Y Combinator, knew \u201cfounders who had control usually did not give it up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Altman also testified that Musk’s management tactics, which might have worked for engineering and manufacturing, didn’t work at OpenAI. <\/p>\n
“I don’t think Mr. Musk understood how to run a good research lab,” Altman said. “He had demotivated some of our most key researchers. He had at one point required Greg and Ilya to make a list of the researchers and list out their accomplishments and stack rank them and take a chainsaw through a bunch. That did huge damage for a long time to the culture of the organization.”<\/p>\n
Indeed, Altman cast himself as defending the “sweat equity” of fellow cofounders Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever, the two people effectively running OpenAI at the time while Musk and Altman had other jobs. <\/p>\n
After that clash went unresolved, Musk ultimately left OpenAI’s board and started competing AI initiatives at Tesla and his own AI startup, xAI. But Altman kept in touch with the mercurial businessman, updating him on OpenAI’s work and seeking his funding and advice.<\/p>\n
OpenAI’s lawyers noted that Musk had been kept up to date and asked to participate in the investments that his lawsuits now claim corrupted the non-profit. <\/p>\n
During one discussion of a Microsoft investment into OpenAI in 2018, Altman said that “unlike a lot of meetings with Mr. Musk, this was a good vibes meeting,” where Musk spent a “long conversation showing us memes on his phone.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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