![\"William](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/elon-musk-appears-in-court-at-start-of-case-that-could-reshape-ai-s-future.jpg\")
William Savitt is representing OpenAI (Jessica Christian\/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)\n<\/p>\nTesla chief Elon Musk has given evidence in court in a high-stakes trial revolving around a bitter feud between himself and former friends Sam Altman and Greg Brockman that could reshape the future development of artificial intelligence (AI).<\/p>\n
The bickering billionaires\u2019 appearances at a federal court in Oakland, California, foreshadow the start of a legal drama expected to brim with intrigue and potentially embarrassing details about the tech moguls.<\/p>\n
Mr Musk filed the lawsuit against Mr Altman and Mr Brockman along with Microsoft over its investments in OpenAI in 2024.<\/p>\n
The Tesla chief and world\u2019s richest man was one of a team of original co-founders of OpenAI, along with the current chief executive Mr Altman and president Mr Brockman.<\/p>\n
\u201cFundamentally, I think they\u2019re going to try to make this lawsuit \u2026 very complicated, but it\u2019s actually very simple,\u201d Mr Musk said. \u201cWhich is that it\u2019s not OK to steal a charity.\u201d<\/p>\n
William Savitt is representing OpenAI (Jessica Christian\/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)\n<\/p>\n
The trial is scheduled to take three weeks.<\/p>\n
Opening arguments began with Mr Musk\u2019s lawyer, Steven Molo, who quoted OpenAI\u2019s mission statement when it was created as a non-profit for the benefit of humanity as a whole, and not constrained by the need to generate financial enrichment for anyone.<\/p>\n
Mr Altman and his top lieutenant Mr Brockman, aided by Microsoft, \u201cstole a charity\u201d, Mr Molo said, \u201ca charity whose mission was the safe, open development of artificial intelligence\u201d.<\/p>\n
In the civil lawsuit, Mr Musk accuses Mr Altman and Mr Brockman of double-crossing him by straying from the San Francisco company\u2019s founding mission to be a steward of a revolutionary technology.<\/p>\n
He is seeking damages and to fund the altruistic efforts of OpenAI\u2019s charitable arm and Mr Altman\u2019s removal from OpenAI\u2019s board.<\/p>\n
OpenAI has brushed off Mr Musk\u2019s allegations as an unfounded case of sour grapes aimed at undercutting its rapid growth and bolstering Mr Musk\u2019s own xAI, which he launched in 2023 as a competitor.<\/p>\n
In his opening statement, OpenAI lawyer William Savitt told jurors \u201cwe are here because Mr Musk didn\u2019t get his way with OpenAI\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Boxes of materials were wheeled into the Dellums Federal Building in Oakland, California (Jessica Christian\/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)\n<\/p>\n
Mr Savitt said Mr Musk used his promises to provide funding to bully OpenAI founding members and tried to take control of OpenAI and merge it with Tesla.<\/p>\n
In fact, he said Mr Musk wanted to form a for-profit company and own more than 50% of it. In the middle of discussions about OpenAI\u2019s future, he added, Mr Musk pulled the plug on five million dollars (\u00a33.7 million) in quarterly donations he was making.<\/p>\n
There is no record, Mr Savitt said, of promises made to Mr Musk that OpenAI was going to remain a non-profit forever, or open-source everything. What Mr Musk ultimately cared about, he said, was not OpenAI\u2019s non-profit status but winning the AI race with Google.<\/p>\n
Mr Molo said the case is not about Mr Musk, but rather Mr Altman, Mr Brockman and Microsoft.<\/p>\n
By 2017, about two years after OpenAI\u2019s founding, it became clear that OpenAI would need more money, and Mr Molo said the founders eventually settled on the idea of creating a for-profit arm of OpenAI that would support the non-profit.<\/p>\n
Terms were capped for investors so they \u201ccouldn\u2019t make infinite profit\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is nothing wrong with a non-profit having a for-profit subsidiary, but (it) has to advance the mission,\u201d Mr Molo said.<\/p>\n
Microsoft initially invested two billion dollars (\u00a31.4 billion) in OpenAI. Then, in 2022, news spread that OpenAI had done a deal with Microsoft and \u201cthis was a horse of a completely different colour\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n
It was a \u201cgamechanger\u201d, Mr Molo said, that violated \u201cevery commitment\u201d OpenAI made not just to Mr Musk but to the world.<\/p>\n
It was no longer open source, it became a for-profit company for the benefit of the defendants and Microsoft was going to have control, through licensing, of much of its intellectual property, Mr Molo said.<\/p>\n
![\"Sam](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1777420509_810_elon-musk-appears-in-court-at-start-of-case-that-could-reshape-ai-s-future.jpg\")
Sam Altman will also give evidence (AP)\n<\/p>\n
After opening arguments wrap up, Mr Musk\u2019s side is expected to present a tale chock full of alleged betrayal, deceit and ambition that caused OpenAI to pivot from its founding mission as an altruistic start-up to a capitalistic venture now valued at 852 billion dollars (\u00a3629 billion).<\/p>\n
Mr Musk is the world\u2019s richest person with an estimated fortune of 778 billion dollars (\u00a3574 billion).<\/p>\n
His lawyer starting off asking about his life story. This included details about his move, at 17, from South Africa to Canada where for a time Mr Musk said he worked as a lumberjack among other odd jobs, then to the US.<\/p>\n
He recounted the slew of companies he founded and runs, including SpaceX, Tesla, The Boring Company, Neuralink and others.<\/p>\n
Asked how he has time for everything, Mr Musk said he works 80 to 100 hours a week, does not take holidays and owns no holiday homes or yachts.<\/p>\n
Mr Molo also asked Mr Musk about his views on AI.<\/p>\n
Mr Musk said he expects AI to be \u201csmarter than any human\u201d as soon as next year. He added that a longstanding concern about AI is the question of what happens when computers become much cleverer than humans.<\/p>\n
Comparing it to having a \u201cvery smart child\u201d, Mr Musk said when the child grows up \u201cyou can\u2019t control that child\u201d, but you can instil values such as honesty, integrity and being good.<\/p>\n
Mr Musk recounted his version of OpenAI\u2019s founding, which he said essentially happened because of a discussion he had with Google co-founder Larry Page, who called him a \u201cspecies-ist\u201d for elevating the survival of humanity over that of AI.<\/p>\n
The kinship between Mr Musk and Mr Altman was forged in 2015 when they agreed to build AI in a more responsible and safer way than the profit-driven companies controlled by Google\u2019s Mr Page and Sergey Brin and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, according to evidence submitted ahead of the trial.<\/p>\n
At that time, Mr Musk said, Google had all the money, all the computers and all the talent for AI. \u201cThere was no counterbalance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Musk recalled there was discussion early on about alternative sources for funding OpenAI beyond donations, and he was not opposed to it having a for-profit arm, but \u201cthe tail shouldn\u2019t wag the dog\u201d.<\/p>\n
There would be a profit limit, and once artificial general intelligence, or AGI, was \u201cfigured out\u201d, the for-profit would cease to exist, he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Musk is expected to continue giving evidence on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Mr Altman, OpenAI\u2019s chief executive, is also expected to give evidence, along with Microsoft chief Satya Nadella, one of the technology leaders who helped fund the late 2022 release of ChatGPT, the chatbot that unleashed the current AI boom that has propelled the stock market to record heights.<\/p>\n
Mr Altman\u2019s court appearance likely made him unavailable to attend an Amazon event across San Francisco Bay on Tuesday at which both companies announced an expanded partnership.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish I could be there with you in person today,\u201d Mr Altman told attendees of Amazon\u2019s event in San Francisco via a pre-recorded video message. \u201cMy schedule got taken away from me today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tesla chief Elon Musk has given evidence in court in a high-stakes trial revolving around a bitter feud…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-422470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}