Musk v. Altman: Sam Altman testified that in 2017, Musk insisted on complete control of a proposed OpenAI for-profit arm, saying he might pass it to his kids
OpenAI's Sam Altman testified that he was “extremely uncomfortable” with Elon Musk's insistence that he have complete control …
Bloomberg
Context & Ripple Effects
The testimony adds to a sequence of Musk v. Altman disclosures focused on OpenAI’s early governance: internal emails reportedly showed Musk seeking majority voting control, while later testimony has examined founder stakes, board concerns about Altman, and allegations around safety management.
Related coverage also places the governance dispute alongside OpenAI’s early financing choices, including Microsoft’s concern that declining support could leave OpenAI closer to Amazon. That makes control of the proposed for-profit arm central to both the litigation narrative and the company’s eventual capital relationships.
First-order effects
Altman’s testimony places Musk’s alleged demand for complete control of a for-profit arm directly into the evidentiary record, sharpening the dispute over how OpenAI’s original governance and funding arrangements should be interpreted.
The testimony increases scrutiny of both Musk’s early role and Altman’s account of OpenAI’s founding decisions, while the parties continue to contest credibility through cross-examination and competing documents.
Second-order effects
The case reframes early backing from companies such as Microsoft as more than a financing question: strategic investors and AI labs have to weigh capital access against governance influence and competitive alignment.
Successive disclosures about voting control, promised funding, researcher recruitment, and board conflict can make governance safeguards a more prominent issue for employees, investors, and partners evaluating frontier-model organizations.
Third-order effects
If these disputes continue to expose tension between nonprofit-style missions, commercial arms, and concentrated founder influence, AI labs may face durable pressure to make control rights and accountability mechanisms clearer before scaling external partnerships.
The broader implication is not a settled legal outcome but a structural challenge for AI companies: the more strategically valuable their models become, the harder it is to separate governance design from capital and competitive power.
The trend: This is one data point in the widening collision between AI labs’ public-interest governance claims and the control demands created by high-stakes commercialization.
Lmao altman says there was a meeting at tesla during the evening about folding OpenAI into tesla for AI research and then “a LONG long period of time with Elon showing us memes on his phone.” the court reporter has to ask him to repeat “MEMES ON HIS PHONE” loudly
One of the things Musk vs Altman shows is how much more promising AI is than anyone expected. Sam could have started it as a for-profit company. His life would be much simpler now if he had. But he didn't realize in 2015 that AI would warrant more than you can raise in donations.
ouch. Molo asks Altman if he was “in the same league with Bill Gates, Pierre Omidyar, Dustin Moskovitz” at the time Altman proposed himself as someone who should be on OpenAI's board. sam says “certainly not”
molo pulls up a list of companies Altman has investments in. point is to show a list of conflicts. quite a few investments in this list: cerebras helion energy reddit stripe a bunch of others that i cant read from the back bench b/c im old as fuck
Sam Altman on stand: “We created one of the largest charities in the world. This foundation is now doing incredible work .. It took a huge amount of work to create this over the last decade plus .. to have the structure where this nonprofit .. making hugely beneficial grants .. …
LIVE TRIAL UPDATE: Cross-examination of Sam Altman opened with Musk's attorney pressing him on honesty. Asked if he always tells the truth, Altman said: “I'm sure there is some time in my life when I have not.” Asked if he has misled people in business: “I do not think so.”
LIVE TRIAL UPDATE: Sam Altman testified he contributed approximately $3.75M in cash to OpenAI at founding, gave equity interests to early employees, and donated $17.5M to an associated universal basic income study.
The Tesla offer is interesting. Musk's offer of a board seat, Altman said, was something he felt was to assuage concerns that Altman would have no direction over the development of A.I. if it were folded into Tesla. But Altman also said it appeared to be a nascent threat. If
Altman is going through his first real postmortem of his firing in 2023. appears to have gone through all the five stages of grief multiple times over in the course of five days interesting though. total shitshow
my ears perked up when i heard this in the courtroom. if any openai researchers care to disclose which models this was for, and why, i'd love to chat! This board was only created two years ago
okay i got the full list of startups/companies Musk's team is showing Altman as investor: Cerebras Degree Helion Humane Reddit Retro biosciences Software applications Stripe trialspark (as an aside it is so funny to be a company named “software applications")
LIVE TRIAL UPDATE: Musk's attorneys confronted Sam Altman with his May 2023 Senate testimony in which he stated “I have no equity in OpenAI.” Altman today disclosed an indirect interest through a Y Combinator fund. He said the Senate statement reflected his understanding of
cross examination is basically Musk's lawyer Molo reading off a list of questions saying “hey bro do you remember all this fucked up shit you did” and altman saying “no, idk, not true, no?”
Has OpenAI publicly said, before today's testimony by Zico Kolter, that the Safety and Security Committee of the non-profit board has, on multiple occasions, caused model releases to be delayed? Seems notable.
Sam Altman just said on the stand in the Musk-OpenAI trial that in 2017, during the open days of OpenAI, he was thinking about running for governor of California.
LIVE TRIAL UPDATE: Sam Altman testified that Elon Musk demanded total control of OpenAI if it converted to a for-profit, including the CEO role. Altman said he was “extremely uncomfortable” with it, citing his belief that AGI should not be under any one person's control.
Part of the thinking around this whole trial is that Elon did it to embarrass Sam, but hard to think of anything more embarrassing for Elon than “he had a plan to turn OpenAI into a hereditary monarchy” [embedded post]
Altman is off the witness stand now after hours of questioning, largely about his reputation. definitely some wins for Musk's legal team this morning, but maybe not a total slam dunk
@keachhagey Now talking about the 2022 texts from Musk to Altman about a microsoft investment that Musk wrote was a “bait and switch”. Altman says 'he didn't know what he meant here' when Attorney said musk was saying they stole a charity