Murati Says Altman Fostered Chaos, Deception at OpenAI Trial

Mira Murati told a federal jury that Sam Altman fostered distrust inside OpenAI, a claim that cuts past courtroom theater and into the company’s grip on advanced AI governance. The former technology chief said Altman would tell one executive one thing and another executive something different, describing him as “creating chaos” and, at times, being deceptive with her and others. She also said Altman misled her about whether a new AI model had legal approval to skip safety review.

Her testimony, delivered by video in federal court in Oakland, California, landed before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers as the trial entered its second week. The case has already shown how much was at stake for one of the world’s most influential AI companies: a nine-person jury was seated on April 27, 2026, and Elon Musk testified for more than seven hours over three days before Murati’s deposition was shown.

Musk sued OpenAI, Altman and Greg Brockman in 2024, alleging the company abandoned its nonprofit mission and used his roughly $38 million seed donation for unauthorized commercial purposes. Judge Gonzalez Rogers narrowed the case before trial, leaving only breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment for the jury to consider. The dispute now centers on a broader question than money: who should control frontier AI systems as they move from research labs into widely deployed products.

OpenAI’s own history makes that question harder to ignore. The company says it began in 2015 as a nonprofit and formed a for-profit subsidiary in 2019 to scale research and deployment. It later announced an updated structure on October 28, 2025, in which the nonprofit became the OpenAI Foundation and the for-profit became OpenAI Group PBC. The foundation now holds a 26% stake worth about $130 billion, according to the company.

Murati’s testimony also echoed the leadership crisis that briefly pushed her into the top job in 2023. On November 17, 2023, OpenAI’s board said Altman was leaving because he was “not consistently candid” with the board and the board no longer had confidence in his ability to lead. Murati, then chief technology officer, became interim CEO. The board at the time included Ilya Sutskever, Adam D’Angelo, Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner.

The current foundation board includes Bret Taylor, Adam D’Angelo, Sue Desmond-Hellmann, Zico Kolter, Paul M. Nakasone, Adebayo Ogunlesi and Nicole Seligman, a lineup that underscores how much the company’s governance has changed since the 2023 upheaval. The testimony now places that instability under a brighter light, as regulators, investors and competitors press for clearer answers on who decides when powerful AI is safe enough to ship.