In a high-stakes courtroom confrontation that has become a proxy battle over the future of artificial intelligence, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testified for the first time on Tuesday, squarely denying accusations that he misled the company’s board and abandoned its nonprofit mission to pursue profits.
“I believe I am an honest and trustworthy businessperson,” Altman said from the witness stand in the federal courthouse in Oakland, California, where the trial is now in its third week.
The civil lawsuit brought by Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI, alleges that Altman and his top lieutenant, Greg Brockman, double-crossed him by straying from the San Francisco company’s founding goal of being an altruistic steward of advanced AI. Musk, the world’s richest man, is seeking Altman’s ouster from the company’s leadership and unspecified monetary damages to be paid to OpenAI’s charitable arm.
The trial has already heard damaging testimony from former associates. Chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, once a key ally, confirmed on Monday that he wrote a 2023 memo to the board that accused Altman of creating a “consistent pattern of lying” and turning executives against one another, which Sutskever said eroded trust and productivity. Former board members Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley told the court earlier that the decision to fire Altman in November 2023 stemmed from what Toner called “a pattern of behavior” concerning his “honesty and candor, his resistance of board oversight.” Altman was reinstated days later and Toner and McCauley were forced off the board.
On Tuesday, Altman sought to redirect attention to Musk’s own conduct. He said Musk had been “fairly mercurial” and had repeatedly pushed for his car company, Tesla, to absorb OpenAI — a proposal Altman said would not have aligned with the nonprofit’s mission.
Altman described a “particularly hair-raising moment when my co-founders asked Mr. Musk about, well, ‘If you have control, what happens when you die?’” Altman said Musk responded that maybe “control of OpenAI should pass to my children.”
“I did not feel comfortable with that,” Altman added.
He characterized Musk’s departure from OpenAI and the subsequent litigation as motivated by “jealousy, as we got more and more successful, in trying to beat us down as he was starting a competitor.” Altman said he had once admired Musk but now felt “he had abandoned us, not come through on his promises, put the company in a very difficult place, jeopardized the mission.”
The animosity plays out against a backdrop of immense financial stakes. OpenAI, which began life as a nonprofit, is now a for-profit venture valued at $852 billion, according to the company. Both it and Musk’s own AI company, xAI, as well as the rival Anthropic, are moving toward initial public offerings expected to be among the largest in history.
Sarah Kreps, director of Cornell University’s Tech Policy Institute, said the trial could damage the industry’s already battered reputation.
“This is not looking good for any of them, and I think that that’s a little bit unfortunate for the AI industry at a time when the public perception of AI is quite negative and seems to be getting worse,” Kreps said.
Altman closed his testimony by insisting that, far from betraying its mission, OpenAI had created “through a ton of hard work, this extremely large charity.” The jury will ultimately weigh the competing narratives.