Musk, Brockman testify in trial

The OpenAI trial is really two fights jammed together. One is about corporate structure — whether OpenAI betrayed its original nonprofit mission. The other is about power — who wanted control, who wanted money, and who gets to define what “for humanity” was supposed to mean. In Oakland over the past two weeks, Elon Musk and OpenAI president Greg Brockman have both taken the stand, and the courtroom story has gotten a lot messier than the public mythology. ### What is Musk actually suing over? Musk says he helped found OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit meant to build safe AI for the public good, then watched Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and Microsoft turn that mission into a profit machine. He’s asking for changes to OpenAI’s leadership and $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft. The trial started on April 28, 2026, before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland. (usnews.com) ### Why did Musk’s testimony matter? Because Musk tried to frame the whole case as a charitable-trust betrayal, not just a founder breakup. He testified for more than seven hours over three days and kept coming back to the same point — that he would never have backed OpenAI if it were going to enrich private individuals. He also said OpenAI would not exist without his recruiting, funding, and connections to Microsoft and Nvidia. (usnews.com) ### What did Brockman push back on? Almost everything important. Brockman said he never promised Musk that OpenAI would stay purely nonprofit forever, and said nobody else made that promise in front of him either. He told jurors the organization is still governed by a nonprofit parent, which is OpenAI’s core legal defense. He also painted Musk less as a betrayed benefactor and more as someone who wanted the company only if he could dominate it. (usnews.com) ### Did Musk want a for-profit OpenAI too? Basically, yes — at least under Brockman’s version. Brockman testified that Musk supported turning OpenAI into a for-profit company but wanted majority control, and Reuters reported Brockman tied that demand to Musk’s desire to raise huge sums, including talk of $80 billion for Mars colonization. That matters because it cuts straight at Musk’s claim that the for-profit turn itself was the betrayal. (cnbc.com) ### Why were Brockman’s diary entries such a big deal? Because they gave Musk’s lawyers something more concrete than vibes. In court, they read entries where Brockman wrote about whether a corporate change could take him to $1 billion and whether it would be wrong to “steal the nonprofit” from Musk and convert it without him. That does not prove Musk’s whole case, but it does make OpenAI’s moral-high-ground story harder to keep perfectly clean. (newsbreak.com) ### How much money are we talking about? A lot enough to distort every “mission” argument in the room. Brockman’s stake in OpenAI’s for-profit arm was described in court as worth roughly $20 billion to $30 billion. Courthouse News also described Microsoft’s stake as massive and OpenAI’s for-profit arm as valued in the hundreds of billions. Once numbers get that large, every old email starts reading differently. (courthousenews.com) ### What else has the trial exposed? Internal distrust. Former OpenAI technology chief Mira Murati testified that Sam Altman created chaos and distrust among top executives while the company raced ahead on AI products. Separate testimony from Brockman also said Musk had OpenAI employees do secret work for Tesla’s self-driving efforts in 2017. So the jury is not hearing a tidy story with one villain — it’s hearing about a company shaped by clashing egos from the start. (courthousenews.com) ### What happens next? The witness list is still heavyweight. As of May 11, Satya Nadella was expected to testify about Microsoft’s role in funding OpenAI’s shift toward a profit-making structure, and earlier filings said Sam Altman was also expected later in the trial. A verdict was seen as possible by mid-May, though the proceedings were expected to last several weeks. (msn.com) ### Bottom line? This is not just a feud between famous tech founders. It is a live test of whether an AI lab can start as a nonprofit, bolt on a profit engine, and still claim the original mission survived intact. The jury now has the ugly part in full view — the ideals, the leverage plays, and the billions. (thehindu.com)