Live updates from Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s court battle over the future of OpenAI – The Verge

All the evidence revealed so far in Musk v. Altman

2026-05-01T17:22:26-04:00

The Musk v. Altman trial is underway, and that means exhibits, or the evidence to be presented in court, are being revealed piece by piece. So far, email exchanges, photos, and corporate documents are circulating from the earliest days of OpenAI - and from before the AI lab even had a name. Some high-level takeaways: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gave OpenAI an in-demand supercomputer, Musk largely drafted OpenAI's mission and heavily influenced its early structure, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared to want to lean heavily on Y Combinator for early support for OpenAI, OpenAI president Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever worried about Musk's level of con …

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The craziest part of Musk v. Altman happened while the jury was out of the room

2026-05-01T07:50:06-04:00

Okay, I am not a lawyer so I only understood about half of what just happened. But I am fairly sure, given the context, that Elon Musk's lawyers may have just fucked up big.

Jared "James Brickhouse" Birchall, Musk's finance guy and all-around fixer, took the stand after Musk today. Most of his testimony was dull and seemed to exist primarily to get some documents read into the record, which sucks but is a normal part of sitting through trials. But at the very end of his boring testimony something interesting happened. I believe we all got a surprise, something that rarely happens in courtrooms.

The lawyer conducting his direct examination …

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Elon Musk confirms xAI used OpenAI’s models to train Grok

2026-04-30T14:16:57-04:00

In a federal courtroom in California on Thursday, Elon Musk testified that his own AI startup, xAI, has used OpenAI's models to improve its own.

The matter at question is model distillation, a common industry practice by which one larger AI model acts as a "teacher" of sorts to pass on knowledge to a smaller AI model, the "student." Although it's often used legitimately within companies using one of their own AI models to train another, it's also a practice that's sometimes used by smaller AI labs to try to get their models to mimic the performance of a larger competitor's model.

Asked on the stand whether he knew what model distillation …

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Elon Musk’s worst enemy in court is Elon Musk

2026-04-30T19:41:32-04:00

Just a simple country CEO who was being tricked by that sophisticated lawyer. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

About five hours into Elon Musk's testimony, I typed the following sentence into my notes: "I have never been more sympathetic to Sam Altman in my life."

Musk's direct testimony was an improvement over yesterday - even if his lawyer kept asking leading questions to cue him in how to answer. But that memory was immediately obliterated by an absolutely miserable cross-examination. For hours, Musk refused to answer yes or no questions with yes or no, occasionally "forgot" things he'd testified to in the morning, and scolded defense lawyer William Savitt. I watched a few jury members glance at each other. During one testy exchange, one woman wa …

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Elon Musk appeared more petty than prepared

2026-04-29T07:31:51-04:00

Today the first witness was sworn in in Musk v. Altman: Elon Musk. I was surprised by how flat he seemed.

This is not the first time I've seen Musk in court. During his defamation suit, he turned on the charm and the jury responded by finding him not guilty. Today he looked adrift and unprepared. The only times he showed real animation were when he was bragging about how much he'd done for OpenAI.

The direct examination is a way of telling a story through questions; it's important to make the narrative clear. For a suit that accuses Sam Altman of straying from OpenAI's mission, Musk spent a weird amount of time talking about himself, recou …

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Elon Musk tells the jury that all he wants to do is save humanity

2026-04-29T06:04:56-04:00

On the stand, Elon Musk is positioning himself as a savior.

In the high-profile trial between him and his fellow OpenAI cofounder, now CEO, Sam Altman, Musk opened by going through his background. He went as far back as being raised in South Africa and arriving in Canada for college with "2,500 in Canadian travelers' checks and a bag of clothes and books," then spent an unusually long time talking about his past, from Zip2 to PayPal to the current, more familiar slate of companies he now runs.

Why is Musk giving the jury so much of his origin story? Though he may be, depending on the day, the world's wealthiest individual, Musk suggested t …

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Elon Musk takes the stand in high-profile trial against OpenAI

2026-04-28T15:00:13-04:00

Elon Musk officially began his testimony in the trial he has brought against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and company president Greg Brockman.

The three were on the initial founding team of OpenAI, with Musk investing up to $38 million early on before the co-founders' relationship soured over disagreements over company structure and mission, including whether or not OpenAI should be folded into Musk-owned Tesla. Musk walked away and, years later, founded xAI - his own direct competitor to OpenAI, which is now owned by Musk's SpaceX.

In recent years, Musk has filed no less than four different lawsuits against OpenAI, many of which have since been …

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Musk and Altman go to court

2026-04-28T10:47:21-04:00

The trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI is officially upon us. And it is going to be a mess. As the two sides fight over the early days of AI, who deserves credit and cash for what, and more, we're likely to spend the next few weeks hearing a lot of important people's secrets made extremely public. Which may be exactly what Musk is going for.

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On this episode of The Vergecast, The Verge's Liz Lopatto joins the show to explain the origins of this case, how it got to trial, and why …

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Jury selection in Musk v. Altman: ‘People don’t like him’

2026-04-28T20:14:33-04:00

On Monday, the courtroom battle between Elon Musk and Sam Altman over alleged broken promises at OpenAI started, as usual, with jury selection. The only tricky part? A lot of the prospective jurors already have an opinion about Elon Musk, and it's not a good one.

The Verge reporter Elizabeth Lopatto, who was there at the courthouse, quoted statements from some of the juror questionnaires:

"Elon Musk is a greedy, racist, homophobic piece of garbage."

"Elon Musk is a world-class jerk."

"I very much dislike Tesla. As a woman of color, I am very aware of the damaging statements and actions Elon Musk has enacted and been a part of."

M …

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Musk vs. Altman is here, and it’s going to get messy

2026-04-27T12:21:14-04:00

Might as well jump, as the poet David Lee Roth once said. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

Elon Musk cofounded OpenAI, and then flounced off in a huff when he wasn't anointed CEO, leaving Sam Altman as the last power-hungry man standing. Now, Musk is back with a lawsuit, and a trial is scheduled to start in Oakland, California, on April 27th. Theoretically, it's a legal case about whether OpenAI defrauded Musk. But that's not really what we're all doing here. This is about mess.

Over the past couple of years, Musk's legal theories for punishing OpenAI have run the gamut from breach of contract to unfair business practices to false advertising. Now, he and Altman will be getting called to the stand at a particularly delicate time …

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