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

Musk concedes that he mentioned a billion-dollar commitment to OpenAI, but the actual number he contributed fell far short of that — in his telling, because he lost faith in the mission. “I contributed my reputation, which nobody else was aware of at the time, these things all have value, without me it would not exist, I came up with the name, which means open source,” he says — but Gonzalez Rogers directs him to actually answer the question. “In monetary terms, I contributed $38 million,” he concludes. A deposition indicates his last $5 million quarterly contribution was in May of 2017, and he stopped paying for rent in 2020.

Savitt starts off by pushing on Musk’s comments minimizing how much his businesses compete with OpenAI. Earlier today Musk downplayed Tesla’s AI ambitions, but Savitt pulls up a 2026 X post saying that “Tesla will be one of the companies to make AGI and probably the first to make it in humanoid/atom-shaping form.” Musk says that in the long term, Tesla will likely achieve this, but that it’s not making AGI right now.

Altman’s attorney William Savitt will be conducting cross-examination of Musk — who’s apparently a popular enough target for unauthorized courtroom photography that Judge Gonzalez Rogers just scolded spectators for it again.

We have been scolded now twice today for people trying to take photos or videos in the courthouse. Do not do that.

We’ll be back with more from Musk soon.

The testimony is reaching 2023, when Altman was briefly ousted from OpenAI, hired by Microsoft, and then returned to his original position. Musk says:

Musk says he was alarmed upon hearing about a $10 billion investment from Microsoft around 2022. “I reacted quite negatively because at a 10 billion scale there’s no way Microsoft is just giving that as a donation or any charitable way,” he says. He texted Altman that “I was disturbed to see OpenAI with a $20B valuation. De facto. I provided almost all the seed, A and B round funding.” An exhibit shows Altman responded: “I agree this feels bad, we offered you equity when we established the cap profit but you didn’t want at the time which we are still very happy to do any time you’d like.” Musk says he asked for a legal investigation and at this point had lost faith in OpenAI.

Musk describes his relationship with OpenAI in three phases: one that was “enthusiastically supportive”, a second where he became “uncertain,” and a third where “I’m sure they’re looting the nonprofit.” He’s asked whether Altman reached out about Musk’s public comments and mentions a time when Musk showed concern on Twitter over OpenAI granting Microsoft an exclusive license for GPT-3. “Sam Altman immediately reached out to reassure me that OpenAI was staying on mission as a non-profit,” Musk says.

In discussing one of Musk’s Twitter posts about Open AI, Musk says that OpenAI’s lawyers “were trying to trick the jury” in the opening statements.

Musk is still describing how his feelings about OpenAI shifted slowly. He says he wasn’t initially bothered by a deal with Microsoft. His understanding was that “Microsoft had agreed to be involved in a capped-profit way … to essentially provide some funding and compute” — but he describes a capped profit structure as still something that would put nonprofit interests first. He says he understood that the deal “would dissolve upon the discovery of AGI … which I thought was probably okay.” Did Microsoft contribute a large sum? “It depends on your definition of large but it wasn’t trivial.”

Musk answers questions about how much his own companies Tesla and xAI compete with OpenAI. Tesla is “not directly competitive with OpenAI,” he says, because it’s pursuing “real-world AI” related to driving: “literally just trying to make the car drive from A to B safely.” xAI is “technically competitive but much smaller than OpenAI” — it’s pursuing AGI but has only “a few hundred people compared to several thousand for OpenAI.” He acknowledges at least one OpenAI employee (Andrej Karpathy) has joined Tesla but says he can’t recall if there were more.

When asked again about Shivon Zilis, he said clearly, “We live together and she’s the mother of four of my children,” a thing he could not summon up yesterday.

Musk says he continued to send money to OpenAI on an assumption of good faith. “I was a little unsettled, but I took their reassurances that OpenAI would be a non-profit at face value. I assumed they were telling the truth,” he says. He says he donated $5 million quarterly and paid $3 million a year in rent for the main office building for “some period of time,” possibly through 2020. It was only around late 2022, he says, that he concluded OpenAI was really breaking the deal they’d made.

Musk shows the jury an email where Sutskever mentions “several important concerns” about Musk’s proposed ownership structure, amounting to a fear that Musk could hold unilateral control over AGI. “My impression here was that they had gone back on what they had agreed on previously,” Musk says. The upshot is that he was a “fool who provided free funding,” he continues. “I gave them $38 million of essentially free funding, which they used to create an $800 bil for-profit company… my intention in providing funding was that it would be a nonprofit that no one would own any stock in.” But at the time, he says, Altman assured him OpenAI was sticking to a nonprofit structure. “I was foolish enough to believe them.”

As he did yesterday, Musk discusses how he initially wanted majority ownership of OpenAI that would be diluted over time, showing an email between him, Sutskever, and Brockman. “I needed to make sure it would go in the right direction and I was also providing the vast majority of the capital,” Musk says. As for Altman, Musk says “initially he said he was supportive, but my understanding is that he then convinced Greg and Ilya to go against this proposal.” He recalls that “I think we talked about Sam and I being co-chairs” during these discussions — but discussion of who would hold the CEO title? “I don’t recall.”

Still discussing his relationship with OpenAI employees in glowing terms, the notoriously difficult-to-work-for Musk is asked if he ever called one a “jackass.” Musk says maybe, but not in anger — “I don’t lose my temper” and “I don’t yell at people,” he says. He’s emphasized that his overall interactions at OpenAI were “excellent.”

On the stand for a second day, Musk is still aiming to establish his importance at OpenAI. We’re seeing emails from Ilya Sutskever and Greg Brockman in which they lavish praise on Musk. From Sutskever, for instance:

Continued Musk under questioning, saying “ I chose not to. I chose to create something that would be a charity, and I could have absolutely created -- just like I created my other company -- and I would have owned a huge portion of the company.”

Elon Musk is going over emails from the evidence, saying that “everyone was in complete agreement” that fundamentally, OpenAI would be a charity.

Musk is on the stand to continue his direct examination. He’s wearing a black suit with a black tie, same as yesterday.

There are no photos or recordings allowed in the federal courthouse.

Elon Musk sat down, and Greg Brockman is here. I don’t see Sam Altman. The jurors will be seated shortly.

In November 2015, Sam Altman suggested something Turing-related as the name of the company that would become OpenAI, referencing the famous mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing. Musk responded, “Something Turing-related that doesn’t sound too ominous might be good. Want to avoid the Turing Test association though, as that sounds too much like we are replacing humans.”

We’re done for the day.