Elon Musk testifies again in bid to dismantle OpenAI over nonprofit mission

Elon Musk’s public rhetoric has become part of the case against him. In federal court in Oakland, California, Musk spent a second day defending a lawsuit built around his claim that OpenAI abandoned a charitable mission, even as his own posts and messages were used to test whether his story can withstand the record.

Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and left its board in 2018. He later sued OpenAI, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2024, then added Microsoft as a co-defendant. After a judge dismissed his fraud claims before trial, the case narrowed to breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment. Musk is seeking $150 billion in damages, with any proceeds reportedly intended for OpenAI’s charitable arm.

On the stand, Musk cast the case as a defense of charitable giving and repeated his charge that OpenAI and its leaders “stole a charity.” OpenAI has answered that Musk sued because he did not get his way. The exchange turned tense during cross-examination, when Musk accused OpenAI’s lawyer of trying to trick him. At one point, he said he was “a fool” for funding OpenAI. He also told the court that without him, OpenAI would not exist, emphasizing his early money, reputation and the company’s name.

The problem for Musk is that his courtroom argument collides with his own digital history. He has previously been confronted over tweets in litigation, and in this case he admitted under oath that Tesla is not currently pursuing artificial general intelligence, a statement that cut against a tweet he had posted only weeks earlier. That contradiction matters because Musk has tried to frame the dispute as a principled stand over mission drift, while his own online statements have created a timeline that opponents can use to challenge his credibility.

The stakes extend beyond Musk and Sam Altman. OpenAI was created as a nonprofit research lab, then set up a for-profit subsidiary after Musk left the board, helping turn it into one of the most valuable and closely watched companies in artificial intelligence. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is presiding over the trial, which could shape whether a company that began as a nonprofit can keep operating as a profit-seeking force worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

The fight has also spilled into the regulatory arena. Days before trial, OpenAI sent letters to the California and Delaware attorneys general asking them to investigate Musk’s alleged anti-competitive behavior and what it described as coordinated attacks on the company. The outcome could influence not only OpenAI’s structure, but also the legal limits on how founders challenge mission changes in fast-growing AI firms.