OAKLAND, Calif. — A jury heard closing arguments Thursday in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, with Musk’s lawyer Steve Molo telling the jury that Altman’s trustworthiness was the central issue in the case. “Sam Altman’s credibility is directly at issue in this case. He’s the defendants’ main witness. The defendants absolutely need you to believe Sam Altman. If you cannot trust him, if you don’t believe him, they cannot win. It’s that simple,” Molo said, according to the Associated Press.
Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015, is suing the company and its top executives over an alleged betrayal of the nonprofit’s founding mission to benefit humanity. He claims that after his departure, Altman and others secretly shifted the organization toward a for-profit structure, a claim OpenAI has denied.
Molo pointed to five witnesses — including OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, former chief technology officer Mira Murati, and ex-board members Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley — who, he said, had called Altman a liar under oath. “Liar’s a very powerful word in a courtroom,” Molo said.
OpenAI’s lawyer, Sarah Eddy, countered that it was Musk, not Altman, whose testimony had been contradicted by every other witness. She argued that Musk had known about and supported plans for the company to become a for-profit business, and that his claims of a broken charitable trust were unfounded. “He wanted dominion over AGI,” Eddy said, referring to artificial general intelligence. “He wanted total control. … maybe he’d give it up over time, or maybe not. But it was up to him and that was the problem.”
The jury must first determine whether Musk filed his lawsuit within the necessary time frame. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has indicated she would accept a finding that the suit was filed too late and direct a verdict in favor of the defendants. But if the jury decides the case was timely, it must then decide whether a charitable trust existed, whether it was breached, and whether the defendants unjustly enriched themselves at Musk’s expense.
During a contentious sidebar, Gonzalez Rogers sharply criticized Molo for telling jurors that Musk was not seeking any money in the lawsuit. The judge noted that Musk is actually seeking “billions of dollars of disgorgement” from the defendants and ordered Molo to clarify his statement to the jury.
Outside the courthouse, more than a dozen protesters bashed both parties as billionaires whose industry would erode the environment and displace workers. “Both parties in this trial are completely hypocritical. They both claim that they’re developing AI for the benefit of humanity and that’s a lie. They’re developing it for greed,” said Phoebe Thomas Sorgen, a peace activist from nearby Berkeley.
The trial, which began in February 2024, is expected to go to the jury shortly. Musk’s suit seeks to end some of the company’s fast-paced transition to a for-profit structure and remove Altman from leadership. The suit also names Microsoft, which became OpenAI’s biggest investor after Musk’s departure, as a co-defendant. If the jury sides with Musk, it could derail OpenAI’s plans for an initial public offering.