OpenAI trial live updates: Elon Musk takes the witness stand

In his walk down memory lane, Musk told the jury he had “$100,000 dollars in student debt” before being able to profit from his first company, Zip2. The jury likely knows the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX as the world’s richest man with an estimated net worth of around $780 billion, according to Forbes.

After setting the stakes for the trial, Elon Musk’s lawyer Steven Molo asked him about his childhood. The tech mogul grew up in South Africa and spent time in Canada before living in the United States.

“I was a lumberjack, I waited tables, I did some programming, contract programming of computers, and I went to Queen’s University in Canada,” Musk told the jury.

After taking the witness stand, Elon Musk said laws governing charities are at stake in his legal fight with OpenAI and Sam Altman.

“It will become precedent, and it will give license to losing every charity in America,” Musk told the nine-person jury.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has taken the witness stand as the first witness in his high-stakes legal battle with OpenAI and Sam Altman. Altman was in the courtroom for the testimony.

Musk sued Altman and other OpenAI executives in 2024, alleging that they intentionally “deceived” him into putting up tens of billions when they cofounded the company together in 2015.

Altman and his allies ” have been unjustly enriched to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars,” Musk’s lawsuit says.

The crux of OpenAI’s case is that Elon Musk is trying to take down a rival. Musk is the founder of xAI, the company behind the Grok chatbot.

On Tuesday, Microsoft’s lawyer told the jury that Musk was suing because he had “fallen behind” in the AI race. “He launched xAI, and then he sued.”

In an effort to compete, Musk has poured billions into xAI, integrated Grok into X, and leveraged his broader tech empire to scale the platform quickly.

In some ways, Silicon Valley is a small community, and this case exemplifies that. Many of the parties were once friends, colleagues, business partners — or all three.

The lawyer for Microsoft, Russell P. Cohen, made a reference to this in his opening remarks: “Mr. Musk knows how to get in touch with Mr. Nadella,” said Cohen. “Mr.Musk never picked up the phone to say ‘you can’t do this.'”

Elon Musk’s lawsuit alleges OpenAI effectively became part of Microsoft through the tech giant’s investments in the artificial intelligence firm, which began in 2019. Russell P. Cohen, an attorney representing Microsoft, spent his opening arguments trying to rip this logic apart. Microsoft wasn’t going to invest billions of dollars for “charity,” Cohen said.

“OpenAI retained control of its technology and control of the company, and you’re going to hear from Mr. Nadella that this is a win-win,” said Cohen, referring to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “Unlike Mr. Musk, Microsoft never tried to control OpenAI.”

Elon Musk is expected to take the witness stand as soon as today. He has been allotted six hours of testimony, Business Insider’s Laura Italiano reported last week.

The witness list in this case is a veritable who’s who of tech, although not everyone on the list will appear in person. Italiano’s story breaks down the key players and their potential roles, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, renowned computer scientist Ilya Sutskever, and Shivon Zilis, a director at Musk’s brain-computer interface venture Neuralink and the mother of several of his children.

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Sam Altman’s attorney, William Savitt, told the jury in his opening statements that the evidence will show Elon Musk tried to take control of OpenAI.

Savitt said Musk “demanded control” of the AI firm and used his bankrolling of it to put “a financial gun to the head of other founders.”

Musk alleges he invested tens of millions in seed money to OpenAI over the years, only to be “betrayed” by Altman and other executives.

Here’s what the layout looks like in the Oakland, California, federal courtroom, according to a sketch from Business Insider reporter Katherine Li.

From the perspective of journalists and other members of the audience in the gallery, Elon Musk and his legal team have a big table on the left, and Sam Altman’s and OpenAI’s legal team sit on the right.

The lawyers are sitting on what is known in the legal parlance as “rolly chairs.” The courtroom is filled to the brim, and there’s a dog at the back of the room, near the entrance, keeping everyone safe.

William Savitt, representing Sam Altman and OpenAI, is spending his opening statement batting away Elon Musk’s claims that his $38 million in charitable donations came with conditions. Musk alleges Altman deceived him by taking the money and then transforming OpenAI into a for-profit enterprise.

“The question is whether OpenAI made specific promises to Musk when he made his donations,” Savitt said. “And the answer to that is no.”

Ahead of Tuesday’s opening statements, US District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers reportedly called out Elon Musk and Sam Altman, who were both in the courtroom, over their public sparring about the case a day earlier.

The judge begged the billionaire onetime pals to stop the online potshots.

“After they posted very publicly about this case, only then did I respond,” Musk told the judge, according to an X post from journalist Mike Swift.

On Monday, Musk and OpenAI traded barbs on Musk’s X platform about the case, with Musk referring to Altman as “Scam Altman” and OpenAI ripping Musk’s lawsuit as a “baseless and jealous bid to derail a competitor.”

In his own opening statement, William Savitt, representing Sam Altman and OpenAI, says Elon Musk brought the lawsuit because he’s losing the AI race.

“The evidence will show that Musk never cared about OpenAI being a nonprofit, he never cared about open source, he never cared about AI safety,” said Savitt, of the elite Wall Street law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. “The only thing Musk cared about is being on top.”

The line to get into witness the epic showdown was so long, it went out the front doors of the Oakland federal courthouse. Business Insider reporter Katherine Li waited in the line earlier Tuesday with lawyers, press, and what appeared to be members of the public, before getting inside just in time for opening arguments.

On Monday, the outside of the courthouse was overflowing with protesters, including a guy dressed in a robot suit with a sign that read: “Altman’s AI enslaver.”

• Elon Musk lawyer Steven Molo kicked off the trial with opening statements attacking Sam Altman.
• “The case isn’t about Elon Musk,” Molo said. “It’s about the defendants that helped Musk found a nonprofit charity OpenAI. And in the process, they have enriched themselves and breached the very principle the organization was founded upon.”
• The trial is now in recess. A lawyer representing OpenAI and Sam Altman will present opening arguments next.
• Elon Musk is expected to take the stand as soon as today.

OpenAI, founded as a nonprofit AI research lab, “broke every promise” when it became “a for-profit operation for the good of the defendants,” Elon Musk’s attorney, Steven Molo, told the jury in his opening remarks.

Last year, OpenAI completed a major restructuring that shifted the company toward a more conventional for-profit structure. It’s now valued at over $800 million and is reportedly working toward an IPO that could take place this year.

Already, this case has led to a treasure trove of private emails and other documents, including text messages showing Musk asking Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg to join him in an unsolicited bid for OpenAI’s intellectual property.

Earlier on Tuesday, employees at MoloLamken, a firm representing Elon Musk, were spotted wheeling boxes of documents into the Oakland courthouse.

Nine jurors will be deciding whether OpenAI is liable in the trial.

If OpenAI is found liable, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will be deciding the remedies in a separate phase. As Business Insider has previously reported, Judge Gonzalez Rogers is considered tough but fair.

Musk has asked her to reverse the transformation of OpenAI’s for-profit arm and disgorge it of “ill-gotten gains.”

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Ahead of the trial’s opening arguments, Elon Musk boosted the visibility of a New Yorker magazine investigation about Sam Altman. The New Yorker story examined claims that Altman had been dishonest in business dealings and in running OpenAI — claims that dovetail with Musk’s lawsuit.

On Musk’s social media network X, formerly Twitter, a post from one of the article’s co-authors Ronan Farrow was labeled as “Boosted” and said, “This organic post was boosted by @elonmusk.”

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In his opening statements, Elon Musk’s attorney, Steven Molo, explained how the Tesla CEO provided tens of billions of dollars for “OpenAI to get up and running off the ground.”

“Without Elon Musk, there will be no OpenAI,” Molo told the federal jury.

Musk helped found the ChatGPT maker in 2015, together with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and company president Greg Brockman, who is also a defendant in the case.

The Musk v. Altman civil trial kicked off with opening statements on Tuesday, first led by Musk’s attorney, Steven Molo.

“The case isn’t about Elon Musk,” Molo told the nine-person jury at the top of his remarks as Musk looked on from the courtroom.

During jury selection, some jurors took issue with Musk, with one referring to him as a “world-class jerk” in a pre-trial questionnaire.

“It’s about the defendants that helped Musk found a nonprofit charity OpenAI,” Molo said. “And in the process, they have enriched themselves and breached the very principle the organization was founded upon.”

Photogs have already captured Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and CEO of Tesla, entering the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building in Oakland, California, where his civil case is underway.

The lawyers will kick off the trial with opening arguments, followed by the witnesses. Musk could be the first witness in his $134 billion case against Sam Altman and OpenAI, which he helped start in 2015.