Musk v. Altman: Mira Murati testifies that Sam Altman lied to her about the safety standards for a new OpenAI model and that he made her work more difficult
OpenAI's former CEO testified under oath that Altman lied to her. … Mira Murati, OpenAI's former CTO, has testified under oath …
The VergeJay Peters
Context & Ripple Effects
Murati’s testimony is part of the Musk v. Altman litigation record, alongside testimony about Musk’s proposed control of an OpenAI for-profit arm and questions about xAI’s use of OpenAI technology.
The related coverage places internal governance, competitive separation, and model-safety decision-making under the same legal spotlight. This matters because the dispute is producing sworn accounts from people who held central roles at OpenAI.
First-order effects
Murati’s sworn allegation puts Altman’s handling of safety standards and her ability to perform her CTO role directly at issue in the litigation record.
OpenAI and Altman face sharper scrutiny of internal decision-making around the unnamed model, while Murati’s account becomes evidence for the opposing parties to test.
Second-order effects
Competing narratives in the case may increasingly turn on internal communications and witness credibility, not only on the organizations’ stated missions or public product claims.
The testimony can raise the stakes for AI-company governance: boards and senior technical leaders may seek clearer documentation of who sets, communicates, and can challenge safety standards.
Third-order effects
If similar disputes continue to expose gaps between formal safety commitments and internal authority, safety governance may become a more consequential dimension of AI-company accountability rather than a primarily public-facing commitment.
The case also illustrates how rivalry among leading AI actors can convert governance and technical-practice disputes into legal discovery, creating pressure for more durable institutional controls; the record here alone does not establish how broadly that pressure will change industry practice.
The trend: AI competition is increasingly being fought through governance and accountability conflicts, with litigation exposing how control and safety authority operate inside leading labs.
Mira Murati's testimony is gripping - and what it makes absolutely clear is how utterly wrong most of Twitter was about why Sam was fired. - It had nothing per se to do with AI safety - It had nothing do with anything “Ilya saw” - It was entirely about Sam's lack of
“My concern was about Sam saying one thing to one person, and it completed the opposite to another person,” says Murati. Altman also was not “making decisions on big controversial things at all,” she says. This made “a very difficult and chaotic environment” to work in, she
murati says the problems she had with altman's management style after he was reinstated still “persisted,” as well as with brockman though to a lesser degree in the latter case
“OpenAI was at catastrophic risk of falling apart. i was concerned about the company completely blowing up. the funding was the last of my concerns.” — murati on “the blip” of altman's ouster
just want to go back to how much intense pushback i got on this story at all levels of the company at the time, and how people speak very differently when under the threat of perjury lot of names etched in my mind w/r/t how certain folks handled this https://www.nytimes.com/...
Mira Murati says she “heard from [her] team” that Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, and Elon Musk were trying to recruit researchers from OpenAI in November 2023 when Sam Altman was fired as CEO.
per murati's texts: as OpenAI was “imploding,” OAI execs including her were worried Demis Hassabis would go on a recruiting spree and DeepMind would come out on top Musk also constantly worried about Hassabis before he left OAI Key theme: everyone's worried about Demis!
When asked if Sam Altman was not candid with her by fall of 2023, Mira Murati takes a long pause, sighs, and says, “Not always.” “I had an incredibly hard job to do in an organization that was very complex, and I was asking Sam to lead and lead with clarity,” she says.
mira trashes the board's handling of altman's firing. counsel asks if her views on sam's management has changed since she was asked by the board Mira: “Ive been gone from openai for over a year. up until the moment i left, my views have been consistent.” that's candor!
Murati testified that, by fall 2023, Sam Altman was “not always” candid with her, and undermined her as CTO. She expressed frustration over his need to “lead with clarity.”
counsel: “by fall of 2023 did you percieve altman was not candid with you? truthful? honest?” murati: (very long pause) “not always” counsel: did he undermine you as CTO? Murati: yes. counsel: did he pit other execs against one another? murati: yes.
Mira Murati, former CTO of OpenAI and former senior product manager at Tesla, testifies in video. “I found Elon to be very inspiring leader,” she says, when she joined Tesla. She joined OpenAI in 2018 after chatting with Ilya Sutskever and Greg Brockman. “I found the direction of
“My concern was about Sam saying one thing to one person and completely the opposite to another person,” said Mira Murati, who was briefly CEO of OpenAI after its board temporarily forced out Altman in 2023. She said Altman was “creating chaos” and, at times, was deceptive with […