05/13/26 4:58pm OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (R) and OpenAI president Greg Brockman arrive at the federal courthouse during proceedings in the trial over his lawsuit against OpenAI in Oakland, Calif. on April 30, 2026. JOSH EDELSON / AFP via Getty Images On the heels of Sam Altman’s testimony in the ongoing trial over Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI, a clearer picture is emerging of how Musk might have run the company differently. Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI as a nonprofit, is suing the company, its CEO Altman and president Greg Brockman for “stealing a charity.” He is seeking to have the now $852 billion A.I. company return to its original nonprofit structure and is also pursuing up to $180 billion in damages to be transferred from OpenAI’s for-profit arm to its nonprofit parent. Sign Up For Our Daily Newsletter Sign Up See all of our newsletters Taking the stand yesterday (May 12), Altman described Musk as a “mercurial” leader, saying he felt like Musk “had abandoned us, not come through on his promises, put the company in a very difficult place, jeopardized the mission, [and] didn’t really care about the things I thought he cared about.” Musk invested $44 million in OpenAI over five years before stepping down from its board in 2018 following a power struggle. He has not been involved with the company since. Despite Musk’s stated desire to keep OpenAI a nonprofit, Altman testified that Musk repeatedly sought control of the organization. In 2017, Musk allegedly proposed merging OpenAI with Tesla, a for-profit company, a move Altman opposed because of their conflicting missions. According to Altman, Musk believed the merger would create a stronger competitor to Google. Altman also claimed Musk initially asked for 90 percent equity in OpenAI. “It then softened, but it always was a majority,” he testified. He further recounted what he described as a “particularly hair-raising moment,” when co-founders asked Musk what would happen to OpenAI if he were in control and then died. Musk allegedly responded that control should pass to his children. Altman’s legal team has used such claims to portray Musk as seeking outsized control. For his part, Musk last week testified that his concerns about OpenAI intensified after Microsoft’s first $10 billion investment in 2022, which he characterized as a “bait and switch” aimed at profit. He argued that Microsoft would only make such a large investment if it expected financial returns, adding that this would effectively give Microsoft control over AGI—technology he believes was originally intended to remain under a nonprofit structure. Today, OpenAI’s ownership is spread among several major stakeholders: its nonprofit foundation holds about 26 percent, Microsoft holds roughly 27 percent, and current and former employees collectively hold another 26 percent, with smaller stakes owned by venture capital firms. While Musk has argued that OpenAI should have remained a nonprofit, Altman’s testimony presents a different narrative, one in which Musk sought majority control and was unwilling to rule out future dominance of the organization. He said Musk