Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s lawyers delivered their closing arguments this Thursday in Oakland (California), and the major trial that could change the future of AI is now in the hands of the jury. The jury must now decide who is right. Elon Musk alleged that Sam Altman took advantage of his initial donations to OpenAI, knowing that it would eventually transition from a non-profit company to a for-profit one. Altman says Musk is only interested now because OpenAI has become the leading company in the sector.
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The lawyers’ closing statements targeted the opponents’ weakest points. Musk’s lawyer, Steven Molo, used a simple metaphor. He asked the jury to imagine a country road where, suddenly, they come to a bridge suspended one hundred meters above a river. At the entrance to the bridge, a woman tells them not to worry, that the bridge is built on Altman’s version of the truth. “Would you cross that bridge? I think few would,” said Molo.
“Sam Altman’s credibility is directly at stake in this case,” said Molo. “The defendants desperately need you to believe Sam Altman. If you can’t trust him, if you don’t believe him, they can’t win. It’s that simple,” he added. Molo cited several witnesses who testified that Altman had been dishonest or evasive.
The final argument from OpenAI’s lead lawyer, William Savitt, focused on defending that Musk knew since 2017 that the company was considering creating a for-profit entity, and that he himself had tried to take control of the company. “He realized he had made a big mistake,” said Savitt, when leaving the company. “Not even the people who work for him, not even the mother of his children, support his version,” he added. He also took the opportunity to highlight Musk’s absence, who traveled this week with Donald Trump to China.
The nine-person jury must decide if Musk’s complaint is credible: Did Altman and Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president and co-founder, lie and unjustly enrich themselves at Musk’s expense? Musk was one of the first funders and co-founders of OpenAI in 2015, when it was founded as a non-profit research lab with the mission to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity. Musk now claims that Altman and others convinced him to invest under that altruistic premise and only later turned it into a for-profit company closely linked to Microsoft, betraying the original mission and becoming millionaires.
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OpenAI responds that Musk voluntarily left the board in 2018 after unsuccessfully trying to take control of the company, and that the shift to a for-profit company was the only viable way to raise the millions needed to train such large models. According to that version, now, after unimaginable success, Musk is jealous and also wants to subdue a huge rival for his own AI company, xAI.
Beyond the arguments of each side, the case poses a very specific threat to OpenAI just as it prepares to go public later this year. Musk is requesting the removal of Brockman and Altman from the leadership of OpenAI and the reversal of the for-profit structure. He also demands that about $134 billion be transferred from OpenAI’s for-profit part to its non-profit organization.
The verdict could come as soon as next week. It will then be up to Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to decide whether to accept the jury’s decision and subsequently establish the compensations.
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