Sam Altman testified this morning in Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI, directly addressing the former cofounder's claim that the company's pivot to a for-profit structure amounted to stealing a charity. Altman dismissed the framing as difficult to process, noting that OpenAI "created one of the largest charities in the world" with a foundation now holding approximately $200 billion in assets.
The most pointed moment came when Altman recounted a 2017 conversation—described as "particularly hair-raising"—in which Musk was asked what would happen to OpenAI if he died while controlling a hypothetical for-profit entity. According to Altman's testimony, Musk replied: "maybe OpenAI should pass to my children."
Altman framed this as a fundamental breach of OpenAI's founding principle. Having run Y Combinator, Altman said he knew that "founders who had control usually did not give it up." OpenAI was explicitly designed to prevent advanced AI from remaining in any single person's hands. Musk's succession suggestion, in Altman's telling, signaled a misalignment with that mission.
The lawsuit's central claim—that safety was subordinated to commercial growth—drew direct testimony from Altman about Musk's management methods. He alleged that Musk's approach, suited to engineering and manufacturing, proved destructive in a research environment. Musk required researchers including Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever to compile ranked lists of accomplishments, followed by staff cuts. "That did huge damage for a long time to the culture of the organization," Altman said.
Board chair Bret Taylor also testified today, explaining that OpenAI's foundation lacked full-time employees until earlier this year due to the difficulty of converting equity to cash—a problem resolved by the company's 2025 restructuring.
Musk ultimately left OpenAI's board after the funding disagreement unresolved, moving on to found xAI and launch competing AI initiatives at Tesla. Yet Altman maintained contact, updating Musk on company developments and soliciting his input on major investments—including the 2018 Microsoft deal, which Altman characterized as unusually positive, with Musk spending much of the meeting showing memes on his phone.