Filing: Elon Musk texted Greg Brockman about settling days before trial; after being denied, he said Brockman and Altman “will be the most hated men in America”
Two days before Elon Musk's multi-billion-dollar lawsuit against OpenAI was slated to head to trial …
CNBCAshley Capoot
Context & Ripple Effects
The filing arrives as Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and its leadership moved toward trial over allegations that OpenAI departed from nonprofit commitments. Related coverage has also put Brockman’s now-large OpenAI stake and the parties’ public messaging under scrutiny.
The reported settlement outreach, followed by an inflammatory response after rejection, adds a private-negotiation dimension to a dispute already being litigated in court and amplified publicly.
First-order effects
Musk, Brockman, and Altman face added reputational and litigation pressure as the settlement exchange becomes part of the case record and public narrative.
OpenAI’s leaders must defend both the company’s governance history and their conduct around a high-stakes trial, while Musk’s settlement posture becomes newly visible.
Second-order effects
The disclosure makes courtroom process and out-of-court communications more consequential: the judge’s earlier warning about social-media escalation now sits alongside evidence of failed private resolution.
It sharpens attention on how wealth created by OpenAI’s structure is allocated, particularly after testimony concerning Brockman’s stake and questions about contributions to the nonprofit arm.
Third-order effects
If disputes over founding nonprofit commitments continue to reach trial, hybrid AI organizations will face more sustained pressure to make governance, control, and economic-benefit arrangements legible to founders, employees, and courts.
The case illustrates how AI-company governance conflicts can become simultaneously legal, reputational, and platform-mediated contests rather than remaining private corporate disagreements.
The trend: As AI companies accumulate enormous commercial value, their original governance commitments are becoming a central fault line for litigation and public legitimacy.
This threat about “the most hated men in America” is not about the trial; it's about Musk's ability to abuse this website to pay mouthpieces to shill for him. It's about Katie Miller being his public defense attorney, etc. Musk's whole game is psychological influence operations.
The judge in this case denied submitting this text as evidence to the jury. She says the plaintiffs should have submitted it during Elon's testimony, where he could have responded. The public has seen it already tho, so, mission accomplished for OAI on the comms battle.
FYI: Starting tomorrow (Monday, May 4th), live audio of the Elon Musk v. Sam Altman/OpenAI trial will be live-streamed on the official YouTube channel for the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The livestream will be available to the public while court is …
i have no opinion on this guy or his work and also 200 grand for effectively saying “ai is gonna kill us all” makes me feel like i made some bad life choices in my studies
Musk hired the longtime AI safety researcher and futurist Stuart Russell as an expert witness for the lawsuit against Altman and OpenAI. Russell says his rate is $5,000 an hour and that he spent more than 40 hours preparing for the case. That's $200,000
Stuart Russell, a computer scientist at UC Berkeley, takes the stand to testify, direct-examine by Elon Musk's lawyer Steven Molo. He says that the current AI race has a “winner take all” dynamic, in which “whichever company develops AGI first (AI that matches or exceeds human