A federal courtroom in Oakland has become the arena for one of Silicon Valley's most consequential legal battles, as Elon Musk takes the stand against Sam Altman and OpenAI. The third day focused mainly on Elon Musk's cross-examination by OpenAI lawyers.
Wired reports that OpenAI lawyers went back to 2017 and showed the court how Musk tried to gain more control but ultimately lost out and left. OpenAI's lawyer William Savitt used emails, texts, and other evidence to portray Musk as aggressively trying to 'squeeze' the organisation after tensions rose.
Key points from Musk's testimony on day three of the trial
- In 2017, Musk pushed for a for-profit structure and demanded the ability to appoint four board members (giving him voting control over the cofounders' three). He wrote that he would 'unequivocally have initial control of the company, but this will change quickly.' Ilya Sutskever and others pushed back, worried it gave Musk too much power.
- Musk, who had been the primary funder (part of a $1 billion pledge), stopped his quarterly $5 million payments in spring 2017. An August 2017 email from his family office head asked if they should continue withholding. Musk replied, “Yes."
- Musk and his teams (Tesla/Neuralink) discussed recruiting OpenAI researchers while he was still on the board. In June 2017, Musk emailed about hiring Andrej Karpathy (a top computer vision researcher) to Tesla. He was reported to have said, “The OpenAI guys are gonna want to kill me, but it had to be done.” On the stand, Musk said Karpathy had already decided to leave OpenAI anyway.
- Musk told a Neuralink cofounder to “Hire independently or directly from OpenAI” and that he had “no problem” pitching people there.
- Musk told then OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis they would “actively try to move three or four people from OpenAI to Tesla” and more would follow over time.
Musk defended these moves on the stand, arguing that restricting employment would be illegal and that he was simply offering opportunities to people who wanted to leave.
Courtroom environment on third day of the trial
The courtroom on the third day is said to have been tense, with the judge even reprimanding someone for photographing Musk. The OpenAI president Greg Brockman was present during the third day.
Musk is reported to appear frustrated, frequently objecting that questions were misleading, claiming poor recall on some details, and dealing with technical glitches and objections.
What does Musk want from this lawsuit?
Musk has accused OpenAI, its CEO Sam Altman, and president Greg Brockman of deceiving him and betraying OpenAI's original nonprofit mission. His lawsuit in the US District Court for the Northern District of California is seeking $130 billion in damages from OpenAI and wants the company returned to a nonprofit structure, with Altman and Brockman removed from leadership.
