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
The Murati testimony is part of the Musk–Altman litigation record, alongside testimony about Musk’s proposed control of an OpenAI for-profit arm in 2017. Related coverage also raises questions about xAI’s use of OpenAI technology, placing governance, competitive separation, and internal decision-making at the center of the dispute.
Murati’s account adds a former technical leader’s perspective to a case otherwise focused heavily on Musk and Altman. The significance is evidentiary rather than dispositive: the allegation remains testimony in an active legal conflict, not an established finding.
First-order effects
Murati’s sworn allegations put OpenAI’s internal model-safety process and Altman’s management conduct under sharper scrutiny in the litigation.
Altman and OpenAI must contend with testimony from a former CTO that could be used to challenge the credibility of their account of leadership and governance.
Second-order effects
The testimony gives Musk’s side more material to connect disputes over OpenAI’s mission and control with operational decisions around model safety, while OpenAI has an incentive to distinguish allegations from proven failures.
Rival labs, including xAI, may face renewed attention to their own governance boundaries and safety decision processes as the case makes internal AI-lab controls a competitive and legal issue.
Third-order effects
If litigation continues to surface conflicting accounts from former executives, AI companies may face greater pressure to formalize and document who can override safety judgments and how those decisions are reviewed.
The broader structural issue is whether fast-moving AI developers can retain credible mission- and safety-based governance once leadership, commercial strategy, and direct competition become entangled.
The trend: This is one data point in the growing collision between frontier-AI commercialization, safety governance, and founder-control disputes.
“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
text message thread from then OpenAI CTO mira murati to MSFT ceo Satya Nadella during the weekend Sam Altman was fired fuzzy time of no sleep for everyone involved including myself but my best guess on the thing mira is refusing to put her name on is the memo sent out naming [ima…
“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
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
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.
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 trustworthin…
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.
counsel asks Zilis “why did you elect for IVF” re: musk's children Zilis said she ended up having some pretty significant health and autoimmune issues...had a few relationships in a row fall apart due to medical circumstances...felt she coudnt promise to be there as a partner
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!
“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 […
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.”