Brockman Evades Questions as Journal Shows Greed
SkimNews Take
A company president who won't defend the mission under oath makes costly experimental projects harder to justify publicly — turning the Musk lawsuit's pressure into a convenient rationale for the Prism and Sora retreats.
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- Greg Brockman was cross-examined (before his direct) in Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI, spending much of the time pedantically correcting attorney Steven Molo on minor words like 'a' and 'the' while avoiding direct answers.
- Brockman's 2017 journal entries described converting to a for-profit without Musk as 'pretty morally bankrupt' while also writing 'maybe we should just flip to a for-profit' and not wanting to commit to the nonprofit.
- Brockman's stake in OpenAI's for-profit was revealed to be worth approximately $30 billion; when Molo asked why he hadn't donated $29 billion to the nonprofit arm, Brockman never answered the question.
- Brockman holds a 1% stake in Sam Altman's family office, received in lieu of Y Combinator stock — a deal Musk's assistant Jared Birchall flagged in a 2017 email, prompting Musk to forward it to Brockman with '??'
- OpenAI had business deals with Cerebras, CoreWeave, Stripe, and Helion Energy — all companies in which Brockman held financial stakes.
- In his direct testimony, Brockman framed OpenAI as his and Altman's idea, casting Musk as a distant, at times menacing figure who was 'very consistent and fixated' on Google's Demis Hassabis.
Why it matters: Brockman's evasiveness and self-incriminating journal entries — called the strongest evidence for Musk's case — give the jury reason to view OpenAI's nonprofit conversion as the calculated betrayal Musk alleges. The verdict now hinges on which 'not-especially-trustworthy' man the jury trusts more, with Brockman's $30B stake and undisclosed Altman ties as exhibit A.
