OAKLAND, Calif. — Elon Musk’s lead attorney wound down the landmark trial of OpenAI on Thursday with a blistering attack — again questioning the trustworthiness of the tech firm’s CEO Sam Altman — while a lawyer for the company insisted that Musk’s central claims were baseless.
In his closing arguments, Musk lawyer Steven Molo conjured a vivid scenario to try to drive home allegations that Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman betrayed the firm’s founding contract by putting commercial gain over creating AI for public benefit.
“Imagine that you’re on a hike, and you come upon one of those wooden bridges that you see on a trail and it’s over a gorge,” Molo said inside the federal courtroom. “There’s a river that’s 100 feet below and it looks a little scary, but a woman standing by the entry to the bridge says, ‘Don’t worry, the bridge is built on Sam Altman’s version of the truth.’
“Would you walk across that bridge? I don’t think many people would,” the lawyer added, drawing laughs from trial attendees.
Altman looked on without emotion, sitting between Brockman and the company’s “Chief Futurist” Joshua Achiam, who memorably testified Wednesday that Musk called him a “jackass” at a company-wide meeting years ago.
The Tesla CEO, who left OpenAI’s board in 2018, was in Beijing for President Trump’s summit with his Chinese counterpart.
During her closing arguments, OpenAI lawyer Sarah Eddy pushed back on Molo’s attacks and asserted Musk’s three days of testimony last month were “contradicted” by numerous witnesses.
“All these witnesses say the same thing,” Eddy said. “No one made a commitment to Mr. Musk. He does not have a charitable trust to enforce.”
Musk — who donated $38 million to OpenAI years before launching his own high-profile artificial intelligence project, xAI — is seeking about $150 billion in damages and a court order unwinding OpenAI’s for-profit status.
Eddy argued there were no conditions on Musk’s charitable contributions in OpenAI’s early years and circled back to a key episode in both the firm’s history and the trial — Altman’s days-long ouster from the organization in 2023.
The majority of OpenAI’s employees signed a letter demanding his reinstatement at the time, Eddy said.
The closing arguments capped three weeks of proceedings that captivated Silicon Valley and beyond and featured some of the biggest names in tech. Along with Altman, Brockman and Musk, the trial featured testimony from Musk advisor and romantic partner Shivon Zillis, OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Molo gave jurors a trip down memory lane, reminding them that when he asked Altman point blank if he was “completely trustworthy,” the techie gave halting, seemingly unsure answers.
Altman answered at the time that he “believed so,” before saying he wanted to “amend” his answer to “yes.”
“Who answers questions that way?” Molo said Thursday.
He told the jury that Altman’s trustworthiness was directly tied to the case, saying, “If you cannot trust him, they cannot win.”
Also speaking Thursday was Microsoft’s lead counsel Russell Cohen, who recapped the software giant’s defense against Musk’s allegations that it abetted OpenAI’s betrayal of its mission.
The trial took on a decidedly personal tone from the start, with Musk testifying in the first week, “This lawsuit is very simple: It is not OK to steal a charity.”
His social media broadsides, including calling the OpenAI CEO “Scam Altman,” drew a rebuke from US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who also told Altman to curb his social media attacks.
At another point in the trial, when Musk began to offer a legal opinion, Rogers interjected: “You’re not a lawyer, Mr. Musk.”
“Well, I’ve technically taken law 101,” the multi-billionaire jokingly replied.
Altman addressed Musk’s “steal a charity” line in his testimony, saying Tuesday, “It feels difficult to even wrap my head around that framing.”
Brockman also faced heavy scrutiny in the trial. Molo ripped him in his closing arguments, saying the computer scientist’s “arrogance” and “lack of decency” are “appalling.”
During a potentially embarrassing moment in the trial, entries from Brockman’s diary were displayed. The document showed him musing about becoming a billionaire and converting OpenAI to a for-profit entity, writing in 2017, “Financially what will take me to $1B?”
“He’s really not an idiot,” Brockman wrote of Musk. “His story will correctly be that we weren’t honest with him in the end about still wanting to do the for-profit just without him.”
An attorney who has represented large tech companies but is not involved in the OpenAI suit said he believes Musk strengthened his case over the course of the trial.
“Musk has more of a case here than previously thought,” said the expert, who attended most of the proceedings. “The first 15 minutes of Altman’s cross-examination were devastating. I’m trying to think of the last time a witness, when asked if they can be trusted, had long pauses before answering.”
Jurors were set to begin deliberations Monday. Their verdict will technically be only advisory, though Rogers has said she is highly likely to follow it.
