Elon Musk arrives at court for his lawsuit against OpenAI at the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building on April 28, 2026, in Oakland, Calif.
Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images
Tesla CEO Elon Musk returned to the stand Wednesday in downtown Oakland, pressing his case in a billion-dollar clash with OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman.
Musk appeared in a jam-packed courtroom of the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building wearing a black tie and black-and-white suit for the second day of his testimony in front of Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. The trial is being held in Oakland because judges are randomly assigned cases in the Northern District of California, which also includes San Francisco and San Jose.
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Altman, who was not in court on Tuesday, attended Wednesday, along with OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman.
Musk originally sued Altman and OpenAI in 2024, alleging that his OpenAI co-founders blindsided him when they steered away from the company’s original nonprofit mission, ultimately cheating him out of millions. OpenAI alleges that Musk knew about the need for a for-profit shift, wanted more control and only filed the lawsuit after founding his own artificial intelligence company in 2023, xAI.
Musk’s testimony largely centered on the early days of building OpenAI with Altman, Brockman and several others. Steven Molo, Musk’s lead attorney, showed several emails between Musk and the company’s founders, which Musk used to point out when he first felt the co-founders were being “disingenuous.”
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“I was a fool who provided them free funding to create a startup,” Musk said.
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According to emails from 2014 and 2015 read to the jury, the co-founders agreed that OpenAI would operate as a nonprofit. Musk continued to donate millions of dollars per quarter because of that reassurance, he alleged, and it wasn’t until several years later that Musk grew suspicious of the co-founders’ intentions to turn the company into a for-profit.
OpenAI attorneys allege that Musk participated in early discussions about turning OpenAI into a for-profit company. Though Musk didn’t deny those conversations happened, he said he believes a for-profit company could exist as a subsidiary while supporting the nonprofit.
In 2018, Musk said he left OpenAI’s board of directors because of his responsibilities with Tesla and SpaceX. At the time, Musk said Tesla was on the brink of bankruptcy and that his priority was making sure Tesla survived.
Musk testified that once he learned Microsoft was going to invest $10 billion in OpenAI in 2023, he “lost trust” in Altman and believed that the co-founders were “trying to steal a charity.” He called the co-founders’ move a “bait-and-switch.”
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“Microsoft has their own motivations. And that would be different than motivations of a charity,” Musk said. “… With all due respect to Microsoft, do you really want Microsoft controlling digital super intelligence?”
Following the investment news, Musk said he texted Altman directly and said, “What the hell is going on?”
During cross-examination, William Savitt, the lead attorney representing OpenAI, called out Musk on his idea of possibility merging Tesla with OpenAI in late 2017. Savitt also pointed out that Musk hired some employees from OpenAI at Tesla while he was still a sitting member on the OpenAI board.
“It’s a free world. People should have the right to work where they want to work,” Musk said.
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Savitt and Musk went back and forth for several minutes when Musk was asked to read a 2018 document in which the co-founders discussed shifting OpenAI to a for-profit company. Musk, visibility agitated by Savitt’s questioning, said he “didn’t look closely” at the document at the time and reaffirmed that he didn’t think a for-profit version of OpenAI was bad if it had “capped profit.”
“OK, let’s everybody calm down,” Gonzalez Rogers said at one point during the exchange.
Musk was also asked about why xAI, the company he founded in 2023, was founded as a for-profit organization. He also argued that xAI is not a direct competitor with OpenAI because it’s “much smaller.”
“That’s how I created all my other companies except OpenAI,” Musk said. “… You can’t found something as a nonprofit and then turn it into a for-profit. That’s having your cake and eating it too.”
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Musk became increasingly combative, at one point accusing Savitt of asking questions “designed to trick” him. Many of his rebuttals caused riffs of laughter through the overflow room full of reporters and spectators and in the courtroom itself.
Musk also noted that he helped name OpenAI and played a role in recruiting its founders, contributions he argues went beyond financial support. He said he later stopped funding the company in 2020 when he became “uncomfortable” with OpenAI’s practices.
“Without me, OpenAI wouldn’t exist,” he said.
Later, when Musk was asked to simply answer “yes or no” or “true or false” questions about his financial support of OpenAI, he argued that answering Savitt’s questions was more “complex.”
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“The classic answer to a yes-or-no question is not so simple. For example, if you ask the question, ‘Will you stop beating your wife?’” Musk said before the judge cut him off.
“We’re not going there,” Gonzalez Rogers said.
This wasn’t the first time the judge scolded Musk. On Tuesday, she asked him to stop posting commentary on X about the trial. Still, Musk replied to a post late Tuesday night about his hair.
“This is what happens if you wear headphones all the way to Oakland after taking a shower,” he wrote.
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According to CNBC, the trial is in its liability phase, meaning the judge is determining if any wrongdoing happened. The nine-person jury, which was difficult to select because many potential jurors had negative opinions of Musk, will also provide their input in this phase.
Musk’s cross-examination is set to resume Thursday.