Sam Altman took on the witness stand to defend his reputation Musk vs. Altman trial Tuesday, as Elon Musk’s lawyers dotted the OpenAI CEO with hours of questions regarding his alleged history of deceptive behavior.
The cross-examination was a well-deserved victory for Musk, who has so far struggled to present a convincing case. Tuesday’s testimony included several heated exchanges in which OpenAI’s CEO had to respond to allegations from former colleagues suggesting he untrustworthy.
Highlighting this evidence is not only important for Musk to convince a jury, but also to beat OpenAI in the court of public opinion. A few days before the trial began, Musk texted OpenAI President Greg Brockman and told him that he and Altman would soon be “the most hated men in America.”
Musk’s lawsuit accuses Altman of effectively stealing from the OpenAI charity and taking the $38 million that Musk donated to the nonprofit and using it to create a for-profit company worth more than $850 billion.
However, there was little evidence Tuesday to fill in the gaps in Musk’s legal case. Altman and Sam Teller, Elon Musk’s former chief of staff, said Tuesday that they don’t recall Musk ever attaching any special conditions to his donations to OpenAI. Additionally, it seems increasingly likely that Musk filed his case too late, years after he made his last donation to OpenAI and developed suspicions that the organization had violated his charitable trust. By then, the statute of limitations had already expired.
Brockman and his wife, Anna, sat in the gallery alongside OpenAI’s chief futurist, Joshua Achiam. While Altman and Brockman were present to observe Musk on the witness stand, Musk did not stay for Altman’s testimony. (Flight records suggest he was traveling to the Washington, D.C., area on Tuesday to visit China with President Donald Trump.)
Before answering questions from Musk’s lawyers, Altman had the opportunity to tell his side of the story, answering questions posed by OpenAI’s lawyers. Wearing a purple tie, Altman introduced himself as an entrepreneur and investor who has always been fascinated and concerned by the power of artificial intelligence.
Altman said Musk has long been obsessed with controlling OpenAI. He recalled “a particularly hair-raising moment” when Musk suggested that control of OpenAI should pass to his children if Musk were to die. “We didn’t feel comfortable with it,” Altman said. Altman also suggested that Musk’s 2018 attempt to create an AI unit within Tesla – and offer him the chance to lead it – seemed like a “vague and slight threat” that Musk would effectively crush OpenAI with or without him.
Altman Bombardment
Steven Molo, Musk’s lawyer, wasted no time in his cross-examination, asking Altman: “Are you completely trustworthy?” as his first question. Altman responded that he believed so, then Molo immediately asked whether the jury should trust the testimony he had just given. Altman responded: “It’s up to them. I’m not going to tell the jury what to think.” Here’s the heated exchange that followed, as best as WIRED was able to capture it:
Dock: Do you always tell the truth?
Altmann: I’m sure there are times in my life when that’s not the case.
Dock: Are you telling lies to promote your business interests?
Altmann: No.
Dock: Have you misled the people you do business with?
Altmann: I don’t think so.
Dock: Do they think so?
Altmann: I can’t answer this for others.
Dock: You’ve been called a liar many times by people you’ve done business with, haven’t you?
Altmann: I’ve heard people say that.
Molo endured accusations against the OpenAI CEO from former OpenAI executives and board members, including Musk, former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, former CTO Mira Murati, and former board member Tasha McCauley, as well as Anthropic co-founders Dario and Daniela Amodei, and questioned Altman about them one by one. Molo even brought up accusations from nearly 15 years ago when Altman ran Loopt, a location-sharing startup, alleging he lied about the company’s number of daily active users.
Altman did his best to dodge these questions, asking Molo to cite specific testimony and claiming he was unaware of certain allegations.
Later, Molo was able to get clearer answers from Altman regarding his investments in companies that entered into agreements with OpenAI. Monday evening, the news broke that a House Oversight Committee had sent a letter to Altman requesting more information about his potential financial conflicts that could interfere with his work at OpenAI.
Altman said he has a nearly $2 billion stake in nuclear energy startup Helion. He also confirmed that OpenAI had reached an agreement with Helion in 2024 that would allow OpenAI to purchase energy for AI development, if Helion successfully developed its new nuclear fusion technology (currently, Helion does not sell energy to anyone). Altman also said he has a $600 million stake in Stripe and is an investor in Reddit and Cerebras, all of which have deals with OpenAI.
In response, Altman argued that he was a great manager of OpenAI. He testified that the nonprofit is one of the best-funded charities in history, saying it has a stake in OpenAI worth more than $200 billion. “I don’t think I could have taken any other steps to put $200 billion into a nonprofit,” Altman said.
Power struggle
While Altman tried to characterize Musk as a control-obsessed CEO in this trial, Molo suggested that Altman cared just as much about power. Altman admitted on the stand that he considered, at one point around 2017, running for governor of California. (At the end of the year, he declared on stage that he no longer planned to run, according to Fortune.)
Molo also questioned whether OpenAI’s nonprofit board actually had the ability to appoint and fire the company’s executives, which OpenAI claimed to do. Molo featured texts between Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and CTO Bret Taylor from the weekend after Altman’s firing. THE texts showed the three men discussing appointments to a new OpenAI board that would please everyone, including Taylor himself, who eventually became chairman of the board.
Altman responded by saying that he needed those assurances to return to run OpenAI, and that it was ultimately the board that fired him, appointed new members, and rehired him.
“I almost didn’t come back because I was very upset. I thought there had been such a failure in governance, and the way the board had gone about it had left such a lack of trust on the part of the people who were supposed to run the company,” Altman said. “Everything I had built was going to be destroyed. I was ready to go back to a burning building.”
Today, Altman serves on the board of directors of OpenAI, which he says is quite common for CEOs. Molo asked at one point if Altman would ever fire himself. Altman, who could return to the stand Wednesday, said that is not part of his current plans.
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