Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX, has concluded his three-day testimony in his lawsuit against AI firm OpenAI and its co-founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. Speaking on Thursday, Musk claimed he was misled into donating funds to OpenAI as a nonprofit, only for the company to pursue a for-profit model later. As a result, he is now asking a federal court in Oakland, California, to reverse OpenAI’s profit structure and order the firm to pay up to $150 billion in damages.
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Trade AMZN with leverageOpenAI Challenges Musk’s For-Profit Claims
Musk has spent three days on the stand since the high-stakes trial kicked off on April 28, serving as the first key witness. On day one, he claimed that OpenAI betrayed its original mission and accused the firm of breaching a charitable trust and unjust gain.
During cross-examination on April 29 and 30, OpenAI’s lawyer William Savitt challenged those claims. He argued that Musk knew early about the firm’s plans to build a for-profit arm, backed the idea, and sought majority control of it.
He further pointed to Musk’s early pledge to give $1 billion to OpenAI, asking whether he had come close to that amount. Musk responded, “I contributed my reputation,” adding, “these things all have value.”
Musk’s aide and family office head, Jared Birchall, also testified Thursday and was questioned about filing papers in 2017, at his direction, to set up a for-profit arm for OpenAI.
Musk Says He Was a “Fool” to Back OpenAI
While on the stand on Wednesday, Musk pushed back on the claims that he willingly backed OpenAI’s for-profit shift. He called himself “a fool who provided free funding to create the startup,” noting that his $38 million donation helped build a company now worth more than $850 billion.
Separately, court emails showed that Musk once pushed to merge OpenAI with his EV firm, Tesla—a move rejected by the AI firm’s founders. Musk, however, pushed back on questions about his desire to take control of the company during testimony.
Is OpenAI on the Stock Market?
OpenAI is a private company, so its shares are not traded on any public stock markets such as the NYSE or NASDAQ. However, investors can gain indirect exposure through partners such as Microsoft (MSFT), Nvidia (NVDA), Alphabet (GOOGL), and Amazon (AMZN), all of which have ties to the firm’s AI ecosystem. Wall Street analysts tracked on the TipRanks Stocks Comparison Center rate all four stocks as Strong Buys.
