Sam Altman testifies at trial that Elon Musk ‘tried to kill’ OpenAI twice
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OAKLAND, Calif., OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took the witness stand Tuesday in a trial that pits him against Elon Musk over the future of the organization they co-founded more than a decade ago.
Key facts
It’s burned into my memory when he told us that we had a 0%, not 1% chance of success,” Altman said
OpenAI eventually created a for-profit arm in 2018 and announced it in 2019
Altman, a 41-year-old St. Louis native and Stanford dropout, is a longtime tech investor who led YCombinator, a startup incubator, before becoming OpenAI CEO in 2019
Musk sued Altman and a third co-founder, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, in 2024, alleging that they are enriching themselves at the expense of what he says was supposed to be a charity
Summary
Altman and Musk created OpenAI together as a nonprofit research center in 2015 and years later had a falling out over control and the creation of a for-profit arm that’s behind ChatGPT. Altman told the jury that he did not understand Musk’s allegation that he and other OpenAI executives were stealing from a charity. “It feels difficult to even wrap my head around that framing,” he testified. Altman, a 41-year-old St. Louis native and Stanford dropout, is a longtime tech investor who led YCombinator, a startup incubator, before becoming OpenAI CEO in 2019.