Elon Musk Takes the Stand a Third Time as OpenAI Trial Enters Day Four

Elon Musk returned to the witness stand Thursday for his third appearance in the federal lawsuit he filed against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, as proceedings in Oakland, California entered their fourth day under the watch of U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.

The trial centers on Musk's claim that Altman, OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, and the company itself reneged on foundational commitments to keep the artificial intelligence lab structured as a nonprofit. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015, alleges the roughly $38 million he donated to the organization was used for unauthorized commercial purposes that did not advance its charitable mission.

OpenAI's lead attorney, William Savitt, was expected to continue his cross-examination of Musk for approximately one additional hour Thursday — a session that picked up after a charged Wednesday during which the two men clashed repeatedly.

Musk accused Savitt of lying and posing deliberately misleading questions during Wednesday's proceedings. "Your questions are not simple, they are designed to trick me, essentially," Musk told the attorney from the stand. When Savitt described one of his questions as simple, Musk retorted, "Your questions are definitionally complex, not simple. It is a lie to say they are simple."

After court recessed Wednesday, Savitt raised the difficulty of obtaining direct answers from Musk with Judge Gonzalez Rogers. "That is the challenge of all litigants," the judge responded.

During roughly five hours of testimony Wednesday, Musk made clear he is not opposed to OpenAI operating a for-profit subsidiary outright — provided the commercial arm does not overshadow the nonprofit. He said he objected to a structure in which the for-profit becomes the "main event," and drew a distinction between capped and uncapped profit arrangements. "They should not get rich off a nonprofit. That's not right," Musk said.

Musk testified that Microsoft's $10 billion investment in OpenAI — which he placed in 2023 — was the tipping point at which he became convinced Altman and Brockman were attempting to "steal the charity." He said he had already lost trust in Altman by late 2022 and that the investment prompted him to seek a legal investigation into OpenAI.

Asked why he waited as long as he did to file suit, Musk said his concerns began forming around 2017 and 2018 but that he was not convinced wrongdoing had occurred until later. "I would've filed a lawsuit sooner if I thought they'd stolen the charity sooner," he testified.

Musk also called himself "a fool" for donating the $38 million, saying those funds were ultimately used to build a company now valued at $800 billion.

A tense exchange emerged during Wednesday's session when Savitt implied Musk lacked sufficient knowledge of OpenAI's internal safety practices to assess the company's safety profile. Musk acknowledged he did not know what OpenAI may be doing with respect to safety, but added, "It does worry me that a nonprofit suddenly is a for-profit with unlimited profit." When Savitt asked whether a for-profit AI company creates a safety risk, Musk replied, "Yes, I think it creates a safety risk," noting the concern applied to his own company, xAI, as well.

Musk left OpenAI's board in 2018 following disagreements with Altman and Brockman over the company's direction, including a failed effort to merge OpenAI with Tesla. The company subsequently launched a for-profit subsidiary, and in October completed a recapitalization that established it as a nonprofit holding a controlling stake in its commercial operations.

Once Musk's testimony concludes Thursday, his legal team is expected to call Jared Birchall — who manages Musk's family office and holds executive roles at xAI and Neuralink — as the next witness. Brockman and Stuart Russell, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, are also potential witnesses, signaling that testimony in the case could extend well into the coming week.

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