“It’s actually very simple,” he said. “It’s not OK to steal a charity… If it’s okay to loot a charity, the entire foundation of charitable giving will be destroyed.”
Altman told the jury during his own testimony that Musk not only backed the idea of OpenAI becoming a for-profit business, he had vied for control of it for the long-run.
“A particularly hair-raising moment was when my co-founders asked, ‘If you have control, what happens when you die?'” Altman recalled in court. “He said something like, ‘maybe it should pass to my children.'”
The pair started OpenAI in 2015, but Musk left in 2018 after his co-founders denied him control.
The lawsuit was in some ways a culmination of the animosity between Musk and Altman built up since then.
As Altman became one of the most famous and wealthy names in the tech industry after the explosive success of ChatGPT, Musk began to criticise Altman and OpenAI. In 2024, the company felt compelled by Musk’s online claims to publish a lengthy blog post, offering the public a timeline of events refuting Musk’s claims.
On Monday, Sam Singer, a spokesman for OpenAI, said from outside the Oakland courthouse that the verdict was a “tremendous victory”.
“This was nothing but an effort by Mr Musk to slow down a competitor,” he said, adding that it was a victory “for the justice system as well”.
Lawyer William Savitt, who represented OpenAI during the trial, said Musk’s lawsuit “bears no relationship with reality” and that the jury decided that Musk was lying during his testimony about the company’s origins.
“We’re pleased that the jury reached the right result, and reached it quickly,” he said.
