Brockman: Musk Demanded OpenAI Control, Tried Poaching Altman
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- Greg Brockman testified that in 2017, Musk proposed converting OpenAI into a for-profit entity with majority equity, majority board control, and Musk as CEO — then walked out of an August 2017 meeting carrying a Tesla painting after cofounders proposed equal equity shares.
- Two days before trial began, Musk texted Brockman proposing settlement, warning: "By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be."
- Shivon Zilis testified that Musk tried to recruit Sam Altman to lead a planned AI lab inside Tesla and asked Andrej Karpathy to send "a list of top OpenAI people to poach"; Tesla's AI lab never came to fruition.
- Musk's lawyer Steven Molo surfaced Brockman's 2017 electronic journal — including an entry asking "Financially, what will take me to $1B?" — while noting Brockman's OpenAI stake is now worth close to $30 billion.
- The court revealed Brockman holds stakes in Cerebras, CoreWeave, and Helion Energy, and Altman has invested in Helion and Stoke Space — both with OpenAI business ties — surfacing conflict-of-interest questions for the jury.
- Former CTO Mira Murati and former board member Helen Toner appeared in video depositions on Altman's 2023 firing, saying they could not trust him because of his alleged history of lying.
- Musk is seeking up to $134 billion in damages and asking the court to remove Altman and Brockman; Ilya Sutskever and Satya Nadella are slated to testify next week before closing arguments.
Why it matters: Brockman's testimony reframes the lawsuit from 'OpenAI betrayed its mission' to 'Musk wanted to own it outright,' directly undercutting the narrative Musk laid when he took the stand. The parallel revelations that Brockman and Altman personally invested in OpenAI vendors give the jury a conflict-of-interest frame to weigh against Musk's greed claims. With $134 billion in damages at stake and an IPO approaching a $1 trillion valuation, the jury's verdict could determine control of the company most identified with the AI race.
