Elon Musk testifies at OpenAI trial over nonprofit mission

2 min readUpdated April 29, 2026

Elon Musk took the stand this week in his civil trial against OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman, and president Greg Brockman, testifying that OpenAI's evolution into a for-profit company violated the mission under which he helped found it.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers presided over the proceedings at the federal courthouse in Oakland, where Musk appeared as the first witness. He described his motivations for co-founding OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit devoted to safe and open AI development, saying he was spurred by a dispute with Google $GOOGL co-founder Larry Page. "I could have started it as a for profit and I chose not to," Musk said on the stand.

Musk said he was open to a small for-profit subsidiary, "as long as the tail didn't wag the dog." The lawsuit, filed in 2024, claims OpenAI broke its founding promises by creating a commercial subsidiary a year after Musk left the board in 2018, and later by fully becoming a for-profit public benefit corporation in 2025.

Musk is seeking about $130 billion in damages, the removal of Altman and Brockman from OpenAI's board, and a reversion of the company to a nonprofit structure, according to CNN. At least $38 million of his early donations to OpenAI, Musk contends, ended up funding commercial ventures he never sanctioned.

OpenAI has dismissed the suit as a baseless "harassment campaign." In his opening statement, lead attorney William Savitt framed the litigation as the product of competitive grievance rather than legal merit, telling jurors: "We're here because Mr. Musk didn't get his way at OpenAI. My clients had the nerve to go on and succeed without him." According to OpenAI, it was Musk who originally advocated for a commercial structure, and his departure came only after the board refused to hand him the reins entirely.

The suit also names Microsoft $MSFT as a co-defendant, alleging the tech giant helped facilitate OpenAI's departure from its charitable obligations. In pretrial filings seeking dismissal, Microsoft characterized the claims against it as lacking factual grounding, according to CNN.

The evidentiary record includes hundreds of pages of internal communications — emails, texts, and call logs spanning the years before and after Musk's exit. A 2023 email exchange entered into evidence shows Altman telling Musk that he regarded him as a "hero," while also expressing pain over Musk's public criticisms of OpenAI. Musk's response: "I hear you and it is certainly not my intention to be hurtful, for which I apologize, but the fate of civilization is at stake."

Elon Musk says OpenAI betrayed its mission

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