<\/p>\n
Elon Musk arrives at court for his lawsuit against OpenAI at the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building on April 28, 2026, in Oakland, Calif.<\/p>\n
Benjamin Fanjoy\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Tesla CEO\u00a0Elon Musk returned to the stand Wednesday in downtown\u00a0Oakland<\/a>, pressing his case in a billion-dollar clash with OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman.<\/p>\n Musk appeared in a jam-packed courtroom of the Ronald\u00a0V. 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<\/a> because judges are randomly assigned cases in the Northern District of California, which also includes San Francisco and San Jose.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Altman, who was not in court on Tuesday, attended Wednesday, along with OpenAI co-founder and president Greg\u00a0Brockman.<\/p>\n Musk originally sued Altman and OpenAI in 2024<\/a>, alleging that his OpenAI co-founders\u00a0blindsided him when they steered away from the company\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n Musk\u2019s testimony largely centered on the early days of building OpenAI with Altman, Brockman and several others. Steven Molo, Musk\u2019s lead attorney, showed several emails between Musk and the company\u2019s founders, which Musk used to point out when he first felt the co-founders were being \u201cdisingenuous.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Make SFGATE a preferred source so your search results prioritize writing by actual people, not AI.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI was a fool who provided them free funding to create a startup,\u201d Musk said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n 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\u2019t until several years later that Musk grew suspicious of the co-founders\u2019 intentions to turn the company into a for-profit.\u00a0<\/p>\n OpenAI attorneys allege that Musk participated in early discussions about turning OpenAI into a for-profit company. Though Musk didn\u2019t deny those conversations happened, he said he believes a for-profit company could exist as a subsidiary while supporting the nonprofit.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2018, Musk said he left OpenAI\u2019s board of directors because of his responsibilities with\u00a0Tesla and SpaceX. At the time, Musk said\u00a0Tesla was on the brink of bankruptcy<\/a> and that his priority was making sure Tesla survived.\u00a0<\/p>\n Musk testified that once he learned Microsoft was going to invest\u00a0$10 billion in\u00a0OpenAI in 2023,<\/a> he \u201clost trust\u201d in Altman and believed that the co-founders were \u201ctrying to steal a charity.\u201d He called the co-founders\u2019 move a \u201cbait-and-switch.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cMicrosoft has their own motivations. And that would be different than motivations of a charity,\u201d Musk said. \u201c\u2026 With all due respect to Microsoft, do you really want Microsoft controlling digital super intelligence?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Following the investment news, Musk said he\u00a0texted Altman directly and said, \u201cWhat the hell is going on?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n During cross-examination, William\u00a0Savitt, 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a free world. People should have the right to work where they want to work,\u201d Musk\u00a0said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n 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\u00a0Savitt\u2019s questioning, said he \u201cdidn\u2019t look closely\u201d at the document at the time and reaffirmed that he didn\u2019t think a for-profit version of OpenAI was bad if it had \u201ccapped profit.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOK, let\u2019s everybody calm down,\u201d Gonzalez Rogers said at one point during the exchange.\u00a0<\/p>\n Musk was also asked about why\u00a0xAI, 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\u2019s \u201cmuch smaller.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s how I created all my other companies except OpenAI,\u201d Musk said. \u201c\u2026 You can\u2019t found something as a nonprofit and then turn it into a for-profit. That\u2019s having your cake and eating it too.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Musk became increasingly combative, at one point accusing\u00a0Savitt of asking questions \u201cdesigned to trick\u201d him. Many of his rebuttals caused riffs of laughter through the overflow room full of reporters and spectators and in the courtroom itself.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cuncomfortable\u201d with\u00a0OpenAI\u2019s practices.<\/p>\n \u201cWithout me, OpenAI wouldn\u2019t exist,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Later, when Musk was asked to simply answer \u201cyes or no\u201d or \u201ctrue or false\u201d questions about his financial support of OpenAI, he argued that answering Savitt\u2019s questions was more \u201ccomplex.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cThe classic answer to a yes-or-no question is not so simple. For example, if you ask the question, \u2018Will you stop beating your wife?\u2019\u201d Musk said before the judge cut him off.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not going there,\u201d Gonzalez Rogers said.<\/p>\n This wasn\u2019t the first time the\u00a0judge scolded Musk. On Tuesday, she asked him to stop posting commentary on X about the trial. Still, Musk replied to a post<\/a> late Tuesday night about his hair.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is what happens if you wear headphones all the way to Oakland after taking a shower,\u201d he wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n According to CNBC<\/a>, the trial is in its liability phase, meaning the judge is determining if any wrongdoing happened. The nine-person jury,\u00a0which was difficult to select<\/a> because many potential jurors had negative opinions of Musk, will also provide their input in this phase.\u00a0<\/p>\n Musk\u2019s cross-examination is set to resume Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk arrives at court for his lawsuit against OpenAI at the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144,1692,1976],"class_list":["post-292371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-sfgnews","tag-sfgtech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n