Nonprofit was ‘left for dead’

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testified in the Musk v. Altman trial on Tuesday, where he tried to make his central claim clear to the jury: He didn’t steal a charity, but Elon Musk abandoned one. 

Altman, wearing a blue suit and tie, spoke from the witness stand in federal court in Oakland, California over the course of about four hours. He said that Musk, who co-founded OpenAI alongside him in 2015, did not keep his promises and eventually deserted the young startup as it was trying to chart out an uncertain future. 

“We were kind of left for dead,” Altman testified. 

Musk sued OpenAI, Altman and the company’s president, Greg Brockman, in 2024, alleging they went back on their vow to keep the artificial intelligence company a nonprofit and follow its charitable mission. He argued that the roughly $38 million he donated to OpenAI was used for unauthorized commercial purposes.

Altman testified on Tuesday that he did not make any commitments to Musk about OpenAI’s corporate structure.

Much of the trial, which kicked off late last month, has centered around a series of contentious negotiations that took place between Musk, Altman, Brockman and Ilya Sutskever, another OpenAI co-founder, in 2017 and 2018.

The executives agreed they needed to raise more money for computing resources, and they debated a range of potential corporate structures, including for-profit options, that could help them do so. 

The talks ultimately collapsed without a clear resolution, and Musk left OpenAI’s board in February of 2018.

Altman testified that Musk’s departure caused OpenAI employees to worry about how the company would be funded, and that some were concerned Musk would seek “vengeance.” But Altman said Musk’s exit was also a “morale boost” for some researchers, who had been “demotivated” by his management tactics.

“I don’t think Mr. Musk understood how to run a good research lab,” Altman said. 

Musk continued communicating with Altman, Brockman and Sutskever in 2018, months after he formally left the startup’s board. He said the company had no chance of succeeding.  

“My probability assessment of OpenAI being relevant to DeepMind/Google without a dramatic change in execution and resources is 0%. Not 1%. I wish it were otherwise,” Musk wrote in an email that December. “Even raising several hundred million won’t be enough. This needs billions per year immediately or forget it.”

Altman said Tuesday that Musk’s comment was…