News

OpenAI Executive's "Jackass" Account Casts Musk as Safety Hypocrite as Trial Nears Close

• By John K. Waters
• 05/13/2026

An OpenAI executive told a federal jury on Wednesday that Elon Musk called him a "jackass" during a heated 2018 confrontation over artificial intelligence safety, the latest in a series of unflattering portraits of Musk to emerge from the company's defense in his lawsuit against OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman.

Joshua Achiam, OpenAI's chief futurist, testified that the exchange took place at a company all-hands meeting in February 2018, shortly before Musk departed the board he had helped found. Achiam said he had challenged Musk on what he considered a reckless push to race toward artificial general intelligence, and that Musk reacted angrily, according to Business Insider, which reported from the courtroom.

"He snapped and called me a jackass," Achiam testified.

When an OpenAI lawyer asked whether Musk may have been trying to push Achiam out of his comfort zone, a characterization Musk had suggested in his own earlier testimony, Achiam rejected the explanation, Business Insider reported.

"I don't think that was why he called me that," Achiam said. "I think he was just upset that he had been challenged."

Achiam testified that colleagues later honored him for the episode. At the following all-hands meeting, researchers Dario Amodei and David Luan presented him with a gold trophy depicting a donkey, Achiam told the jury, inscribed: "Never stop being a jackass for safety."

OpenAI called Achiam to the stand as part of its effort to undercut Musk's portrayal of himself as a principled champion of AI safety. Achiam testified that Musk had seemed focused on speed over caution, saying Musk appeared to want to "race towards AGI" because he feared that a rival, if it got there first, would misuse the technology, Business Insider reported. Achiam said he and other researchers viewed that approach as a "fairly unsafe proposition" and described Musk's vision as sounding "reckless."

Wednesday's testimony came as the three-week-old trial neared its end. Closing arguments are expected to begin Thursday, with jury deliberations to follow. The nine-person jury was seated on April 27 in federal court in Oakland, where U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is presiding.

Musk filed the lawsuit in 2024, claiming that Altman, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, and Microsoft induced him to contribute roughly $38 million to OpenAI on the understanding that it would remain a nonprofit dedicated to developing artificial intelligence for public benefit, according to court filings. He is seeking as much as $134 billion in damages and has asked the court to unwind OpenAI's restructuring, remove Altman and Brockman from their roles, and force the company to revert to a nonprofit structure, according to MIT Technology Review.

OpenAI and its co-defendants deny wrongdoing. Their defense, as presented at trial, is that Musk was aware of discussions about for-profit structures, sought personal control of the organization, and turned against OpenAI after leaving to found xAI, a rival AI company, in 2023.

Wednesday's courtroom session followed the conclusion of Altman's testimony on Tuesday, in which the OpenAI chief executive directly rejected Musk's central accusation.

"It feels difficult to even wrap my head around that framing," Altman testified, referring to Musk's claim that Altman and Brockman had tried to "steal a charity," according to Axios.

Altman testified that OpenAI's move toward a commercial structure was the only path to raising the capital required to pursue its safety mission, and that Musk himself had pushed for control of any for-profit entity OpenAI might create. Altman said Musk initially sought a controlling stake and later proposed that OpenAI become a division of Tesla, an arrangement that would have included offering Altman a seat on Tesla's board, according to CNBC.

Musk's lawyer, Steven Molo, used cross-examination to attack Altman's credibility, pressing him on past criticism from former colleagues, including OpenAI co-founder Dario Amodei, who later founded the rival AI company Anthropic, and from board members who briefly ousted Altman from his role in November 2023. Altman testified that he considered his 2023 removal "an incredible betrayal."

"I believe I am an honest and trustworthy businessperson," Altman told the jury, according to Axios.

OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research laboratory by Musk, Altman, Brockman, co-founder Ilya Sutskever, and others. Musk departed the board in February 2018 after failing to gain control of the organization, according to testimony presented at trial. OpenAI subsequently created a capped-profit subsidiary, saying it required more capital, computing power, and engineering talent to compete with well-funded technology companies. Microsoft became its primary commercial partner, providing billions of dollars in funding and cloud infrastructure as OpenAI's products, including ChatGPT, made the company one of the most closely watched private firms in technology. OpenAI has said its valuation now exceeds $850 billion.

Sutskever, who voted to remove Altman in 2023, testified earlier in the trial that he had spent more than a year compiling a memo accusing Altman of what he called "a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs, and pitting his execs against one another." But Sutskever also testified that Musk had not negotiated special promises tied to his donations and that a for-profit path had emerged as a consensus approach to funding advanced AI research.

Also testifying earlier in the trial was Shivon Zilis, a former OpenAI board member who served from 2020 to 2023 and has four children with Musk, according to testimony reported by CNBC and the Washington Post. Zilis, who also works at Musk's brain-technology company Neuralink, testified that the company's founders discussed various corporate structures, including for-profit options,  at length during the critical 2017-to-2018 period, and that no one proposed simply replacing the nonprofit with a for-profit corporation. She also testified that Musk had proposed merging OpenAI into Tesla and had offered Altman a seat on Tesla's board as part of that arrangement, according to CNBC.

If the jury finds liability, Judge Gonzalez Rogers would determine any remedies, according to court filings.