"Hair-raising." That's the word Sam Altman used on the stand to describe Elon Musk's alleged proposal to pass control of OpenAI to his children.
Altman testified in the ongoing Musk v. Altman trial, where Musk's legal team is pressing claims that Altman deceived him and built a personal financial empire off OpenAI's commercial pivot. Altman's testimony went on offense: he portrayed Musk as someone fixated on owning OpenAI outright, not just advancing its stated mission of building AI that benefits humanity.
The specific allegation about Musk's kids was notable. Altman said the idea - that Musk could effectively pass the company to his family as an inherited asset - was incompatible with OpenAI's nonprofit origins. Musk's lawyers pushed back by probing Altman's own web of financial investments and whether he profited personally from OpenAI's shift toward for-profit operations.
The trial traces back to a core dispute that's been running since Musk filed suit in 2024: did OpenAI's founders promise to build a non-commercial AI research lab, and did Altman and others break that promise when they created a capped-profit corporate structure underneath the nonprofit? Musk was an early backer and board member before departing in 2018. He now runs xAI, a direct OpenAI competitor, which his opponents argue undermines his standing as an aggrieved idealist.
The two accounts of OpenAI's founding can't both be true. Either Musk was a believer who got pushed out when the mission shifted, or he was a control-seeker who left when he couldn't get what he wanted. What happened in that courtroom is each side trying to make the other's version of history stick.