Elon Musk on the stand — grilled on AI profits, nonprofit mission, and whether xAI was built on OpenAI's own tech. Welcome to Musk v Altman Daily — I'm Devin, that's Cassidy, and today the trial got genuinely uncomfortable for everyone involved. We've got courtroom testimony, a stunning xAI training admission, and Microsoft's ten billion dollars suddenly looking very relevant — it's all on the docket. And spoiler: when your whole case is 'OpenAI betrayed its mission,' it helps if you didn't use their models to build your competitor. Okay, from AFP:
A benefactor to OpenAI's co-founders -- to whom he gave $38 million during the project's early days from 2015 to 2017 -- Musk accuses CEO Sam Altman and his partner Greg Brockman of betraying the startup's charitable mission by transforming it into a commercial company valued at more than $850 billion and poised to go public.
Day three of Musk on the stand in San Francisco, and Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers had to step in multiple times just to get him to answer a direct question. That's not a great look when you're the plaintiff. He literally said 'I am not a lawyer' — right after trying to coach the court on what constitutes a leading question. The judge was not impressed, and honestly, neither am I. The core legal problem for Musk is the same one it's been from day one: he's suing OpenAI for abandoning its nonprofit mission while running a for-profit AI company himself. The defense is going to hammer that contradiction every single day. And look, OpenAI absolutely drifted from its mission — I believe that. But Musk's hands are filthy here too. xAI isn't exactly a charity. This is two guys in a money fight dressed up as a values fight. And this came up over on r/OpenAI, with 162 upvotes:
It would be weird if Musk win this. They have proof that he tried to make OpenAI a part of his other companies.
That Reddit comment is pointing at something real — there's reportedly evidence Musk wanted OpenAI folded into his own corporate structure early on. If that holds up, his standing to cry 'looted charity' gets a lot shakier. Wanting it to be YOUR for-profit company is not the same as wanting it to stay a nonprofit. That's the whole ballgame right there. Another one from r/OpenAI, this one at 28 upvotes:
Just make your models open source and his lawsuit loses all basis... hes right you are open ai you should have remained that way.
The 'just go open source' take is satisfying but it's not how litigation works — OpenAI's past conduct is already in question regardless of what they do tomorrow. Agreed. Open-sourcing now doesn't retroactively cure a breach of fiduciary duty, if one occurred. The court's looking backward, not forward. And then, from r/OpenAI, with 11 upvotes:
Whoever loses will just appeal. Nothing will change for years.
Whoever loses, appeals. That's almost certainly right — the stakes are too high for either side to walk away. We could be covering this case well into 2027. Great. More depositions, more 'I am not a lawyer' moments. Can't wait. Now, from Roland Li at the San Francisco Chronicle:
Elon Musk, the founder of xAI, has testified that his startup, now part of SpaceX, partially used OpenAI’s technology to train its artificial intelligence. This practice appears to violate the terms of service of OpenAI. Musk is seeking $134 billion in damages for violating OpenAI's charitable trust and unjust enrichment.
Hat tip to Roland Li and the San Francisco Chronicle for this one — Musk testified in Oakland federal court that xAI partially used OpenAI's technology to train its models. The same technology he's suing OpenAI over misusing. So he's on the stand seeking a hundred and thirty-four billion dollars from OpenAI while admitting he was training on their stack. That's not a lawsuit, that's a confession with a price tag. Legally it complicates his unjust enrichment claim pretty significantly. It's hard to argue someone stole from you when you were also helping yourself. Over on r/artificial, 16 upvotes, someone put it this way:
So the Chinese companies running "distillation attacks" were actually Musk?
Honestly? That Reddit comment is doing more legal analysis than half the takes I've seen today. The 'distillation attack' framing hits different now. It's a sharp observation, but knowingly violating ToS and a distillation attack aren't the same legal theory — still, this testimony is going to be exhibit A for OpenAI's counter. From Hayden Field at The Verge:
The Musk v. Altman trial is underway, and that means exhibits, or the evidence to be presented in court, are being revealed piece by piece. So far, email exchanges, photos, and corporate documents are circulating from the earliest days of OpenAI — and from before the AI lab even had a name.
The Verge's Hayden Field has been tracking the evidence as it surfaces in Musk v. Altman, and the exhibits paint a pretty detailed picture of OpenAI's founding chaos — emails from 2015, corporate docs, even the Jensen Huang GPU handshake. So Musk basically wrote OpenAI's mission statement, and now he's suing because they didn't follow it? That's like arsonists suing for fire damage. That's colorful, Devin. The legally relevant part is whether those early documents establish a binding nonprofit commitment — because if they do, OpenAI's for-profit conversion is a much harder sell in court. And Brockman and Sutskever were already worried about Musk's control back then — so both sides have always been playing power games here. Neither of these guys is the hero of this story. And from Moneycontrol:
In his statement, Musk said that large-scale investments are typically made with the expectation of returns. Referring to Microsoft’s reported $10 billion backing of OpenAI, he argued that such an amount would not be committed without a clear financial objective.
Elon Musk back on the stand, this time training his sights on Microsoft's ten-billion-dollar stake in OpenAI — arguing in court that no one writes a check that size without expecting a return. Moneycontrol had the testimony details. And he's not wrong! That's the part that drives me crazy — Musk is making a genuinely valid point about for-profit capture of AGI development, and I still don't trust his motives for one second. Legally, the argument has teeth. If OpenAI's nonprofit obligations conflict with Microsoft extracting returns on ten billion dollars, that's a real structural tension — not just a talking point. Sure, but Elon Musk complaining about corporate influence over AGI while running xAI is a little like an arsonist testifying about fire safety codes. One more courtroom detail here, from Caroline O'Donovan at SF Standard:
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers appeared fed up with Musk’s pontificating, particularly on the topic of killer robots.
“It’s not the point of the case,” Rogers said as she instructed Musk that he was no longer allowed to bring up existential AI risk and the possibility of human extinction on the stand. “They got it. That’s enough.”
SF Standard's Caroline O'Donovan has the day-three wrap from Oakland — and the headline is essentially that Judge Gonzalez Rogers had to tell Elon Musk, on the stand, to stop talking about killer robots. That is a real thing that happened in a federal courthouse. The Terminator. He cited the Terminator. In front of a federal judge. This man is suing OpenAI for abandoning its nonprofit mission and his big swing is 'have you seen the 1984 film?' To be fair to the legal posture here — Musk is the plaintiff. This was his testimony, his moment to build a case. And the judge cutting him off suggests he burned a lot of it on sci-fi instead of the actual conversion-from-nonprofit argument. Which is wild, because the underlying argument — that Altman and the cofounders hijacked a public-benefit organization for private enrichment — is not a crazy argument. I believe it! He just made it impossible to root for him. We've put links to every story from today's episode in the show notes, so if something caught your ear, you can go read the original reporting there.
That's Musk v Altman Daily for this Friday. This is a Lantern Podcast.