Elon Musk finally takes the stand in his grudge match against OpenAI

Elon Musk finally sat down in the witness box this week to testify in the lawsuit he’s been dragging against OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Greg Brockman. It’s been a long time coming, and honestly, it feels less like a legal proceeding and more like a messy public breakup playing out in slow motion.

The core of the dispute is old news by now: Musk was one of the original three co-founders, put in up to $38 million of his own money early on, and then things went sour. The flashpoint? Disagreements over whether OpenAI should be absorbed into Tesla, which Musk was running at the time. Altman and Brockman reportedly balked, Musk walked, and the rest is history.

Since then, Musk has filed at least four separate lawsuits against OpenAI. Most have been dismissed or merged, but this one stuck around long enough to get to trial. The irony is thick: Musk’s own AI company, xAI, is now a direct competitor to OpenAI, and it’s owned by SpaceX — another Musk-controlled entity. So the guy who left because he didn’t like the direction is now running his own version of the same playbook.

What struck me watching the coverage is how personal this has gotten. Musk isn’t just arguing about breach of contract or fiduciary duty — he’s arguing about legacy. He wants the court to validate that OpenAI betrayed its original nonprofit mission. But the counterargument writes itself: Musk himself abandoned that mission to build xAI, which is about as for-profit as it gets.

Altman’s legal team will likely hammer on that inconsistency. They’ll point out that Musk’s complaints sound less like a principled stand and more like sour grapes from someone who lost a power struggle years ago. And to be fair, Musk’s track record of making grand claims about “open” AI while running a closed-source competitor doesn’t help his credibility.

I don’t expect this trial to end cleanly. These cases rarely do. But it’s fascinating to watch two of the most influential figures in AI tear into each other in a courtroom instead of on Twitter. For once, the drama is happening somewhere with actual consequences.