Musk vs. OpenAI Trial Ends Week with Focus on Safety, Governance, and Altman’s Leadership

• By John K. Waters
• 05/07/2026

The second week of the Musk vs. OpenAI trial closed with two days of testimony and deposition video that sharpened the central question in the case: whether OpenAI’s evolution from a nonprofit AI research lab into one of the world’s most valuable AI companies violated its founding mission.

On Wednesday and Thursday, jurors in federal court in Oakland heard from former OpenAI board members, a former OpenAI safety researcher, and a nonprofit governance expert. Much of the testimony focused on two overlapping themes: whether OpenAI’s leadership kept its board properly informed, and whether the organization’s growing product and commercial ambitions came at the expense of its stated mission to develop AI for the benefit of humanity.

Elon Musk, who co-founded and helped fund OpenAI in its early years, is suing OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman, Microsoft, and other defendants. Musk claims OpenAI abandoned its nonprofit purpose and improperly shifted toward a for-profit structure. OpenAI has denied wrongdoing and has argued that Musk’s suit is an attempt to damage a competitor after he launched xAI, his own AI company. Musk is seeking the removal of Altman and Brockman, an order stopping OpenAI from operating as a public benefit corporation, and damages for OpenAI’s nonprofit.

Wednesday’s proceedings featured Shivon Zilis, a former OpenAI board member who also worked closely with Musk across his AI-related businesses and is the mother of four of his children. Zilis testified about her OpenAI board service and her role during a period when OpenAI’s founders considered ways to raise more money while preserving or changing the organization’s structure, ABC7 Bay Area reported. Zilis served on OpenAI’s board from 2020 to 2023 and voted to approve the 2023 Microsoft agreement in which Microsoft invested $10 billion and received expanded rights to OpenAI intellectual property.
 
Zilis’ testimony was useful to both sides. Musk’s team used her as a witness with firsthand knowledge of OpenAI’s internal debates over structure, funding, and mission. OpenAI’s lawyers used cross-examination to highlight Musk’s own attempts to steer or control OpenAI before he left the organization. Emails and testimony presented on Wednesday showed that, a few months before Musk left OpenAI’s board in 2018, he tried to recruit Altman to a “world-class AI lab” inside Tesla and even offered Altman a Tesla board seat, WIRED reported.

OpenAI’s lawyers also cited evidence related to Musk’s alleged plans to fold OpenAI into Tesla, including emails from Zilis that discussed Tesla as a way to address OpenAI’s funding problem. In one exchange covered by The Verge’s live blog, Zilis was asked about texting Musk regarding the Microsoft deal and whether Microsoft controlled OpenAI. She said she could see the evidence but did not clearly remember the underlying exchange.

Wednesday also brought jurors deeper into the 2023 board crisis that briefly removed Altman as CEO. The Verge reported that jurors watched deposition testimony from former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and former board member Helen Toner. Murati’s testimony and documents focused on her concerns about Altman’s management style, while Toner described the board’s concerns about Altman’s honesty, candor, and resistance to board oversight.

Business Insider reported that Murati testified that her concern was not primarily about safety, but about what she described as chaos created by Altman’s leadership. Murati said she supported Altman’s return after his ouster because she feared the company was at risk of falling apart. Toner testified that she learned about ChatGPT’s release via Twitter screenshots and that the board was not well-informed about key developments.

On Thursday, the focus moved more squarely to whether OpenAI had lived up to its mission. NBC Bay Area reported that jurors heard from three witnesses: a former OpenAI employee who worked on safety issues, a board member who voted to fire Altman, and an expert on nonprofit governance. Each witness, according to NBC Bay Area, suggested in some way that OpenAI was not properly fulfilling its mission.

Former OpenAI safety researcher Rosie Campbell testified that she believed the organization’s commitment to safety eroded during her time there, according to Business Insider. Campbell said OpenAI once had two long-term AI safety teams, including one focused on preparing the world for superhuman AI, but that both were eventually eliminated. She also testified that she signed the employee letter calling for Altman’s reinstatement after his 2023 ouster because she feared OpenAI would otherwise disintegrate and that employees would end up at Microsoft, which she believed would be less focused on AI safety.

Former OpenAI board member Tasha McCauley’s deposition was also played for jurors on Thursday. According to reports, McCauley said Altman created chaos and crisis by fostering what she called a “culture of lying and culture of deceit.” She testified that those concerns were especially troubling at a nonprofit charged with developing safe AI for humanity’s benefit.

Musk’s team then called David Schizer, a Columbia Law School professor and former dean, as an expert witness on nonprofit governance. According to reports, Schizer was asked whether certain actions described by previous witnesses would be consistent with OpenAI’s safety-first mission and nonprofit customs and practices. In one exchange, he said that a board and CEO need to work together to ensure the mission is followed, and that a CEO withholding information from the board would be “a big problem.”

The week’s testimony gave Musk’s side a clearer narrative than the one that emerged during his own time on the stand: OpenAI, his lawyers suggested, became increasingly commercial, increasingly product-driven, and insufficiently accountable to its nonprofit board. But OpenAI’s defense also gained ground by putting Musk’s own history with the company back into the record, including evidence that he explored ways to put OpenAI closer to Tesla and that he now runs a competing AI firm.

No verdict was issued this week. Testimony ended Thursday afternoon, and the jury is expected to return on Monday. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is scheduled to appear on Monday, with former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever expected to appear afterward. Closing arguments are expected the following week.