In the third week of the Musk v. Altman trial, OpenAI's legal team introduced an unusual exhibit: a novelty trophy - specifically, a physical "ass" statue - submitted as evidence about Elon Musk's conduct during his time on the OpenAI board.
The lawsuit dates to Musk's 2024 claim that OpenAI violated its founding agreement. When Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 alongside Sam Altman and others, the organization was structured as a nonprofit dedicated to developing artificial general intelligence - AI systems capable of performing any intellectual task a human can do - for the benefit of humanity rather than private shareholders. Musk's core argument is that the company's shift toward a capped-profit model, backed by over $13 billion from Microsoft, broke that original promise.
OpenAI's defense reframes the case entirely. Rather than a betrayed idealist, the company argues Musk wanted personal control of OpenAI, failed to get it, and then launched a competing lab (xAI) using relationships and knowledge from his OpenAI years. The trophy is part of that framing - a tangible exhibit meant to characterize Musk's personality and motivations for the jury.
The stakes here are larger than the personal dispute suggests. A ruling for Musk could require OpenAI to restructure its planned corporate conversion or compensate its nonprofit entity more substantially, complicating the company's ability to raise the capital it says is needed to train newer, more expensive models. A ruling against Musk clears that path and validates the nonprofit-to-commercial transition that several other AI labs are also quietly pursuing.
Closing arguments have not yet been scheduled.