An OpenAI lawyer on Thursday defended the company’s chief executive, Sam Altman, from withering character attacks by Elon Musk’s legal team, as both sides delivered their closing arguments in a trial with potentially seismic implications for the artificial intelligence race.
Earlier, Steven Molo, Mr. Musk’s lead counsel, laid out the billionaire’s case that OpenAI and its leadership breached the start-up’s founding agreement by putting commercial gain over the public good. He told the jury that the case should hinge largely on the credibility of Mr. Altman, as he displayed an unflattering photo of the executive and portrayed him as deeply untrustworthy.
“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,” Mr. Molo said. “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.’”
He then asked the jury: “Would you walk across that bridge? I don’t think many people would.”
Mr. Musk, Sam Altman and other A.I. researchers founded OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015, vowing to freely share its technology with the rest of the world. But Mr. Musk left the start-up in 2018 after a power struggle with Mr. Altman — and before the public launch of ChatGPT in 2022 that catapulted OpenAI to commercial success, with Greg Brockman as its president.
Sarah Eddy, a member of OpenAI’s legal team, aimed in her closing argument to dull the attacks on Mr. Altman and convey that Mr. Musk’s case was groundless. She said the statute of limitations had expired by the time Mr. Musk brought his suit in August 2024, and that “no one in this case, other than Elon Musk, has testified to any commitments or promises that Sam Altman or Greg Brockman or OpenAI made to Mr. Musk.”
She told the jury that although Mr. Musk accused Mr. Altman and others of stealing a charity, the OpenAI nonprofit still controls OpenAI’s for-profit arm and now has assets worth tens of billions of dollars. She also repeatedly argued that Mr. Musk wanted to turn OpenAI into a for-profit, and that he wanted “unequivocal control” over this for-profit venture.
The stakes are high. Mr. Musk, who was not in the courtroom on Thursday after traveling to China with President Trump, is asking for more than $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, OpenAI’s primary partner, and said any damages would be shared with the OpenAI nonprofit. He is also asking the court to remove Mr. Altman from the start-up’s board and to stop a shift the company made last year to operate as a for-profit company.
If Mr. Musk loses, Mr. Altman would likely solidify control of OpenAI, which is now valued at about $730 billion. And the company would be free to pursue a data center expansion plan that could cost hundreds of billions of dollars as it appears headed toward one of the biggest initial public offerings in history.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied the suit’s claims.)
Here’s what else to know:
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Major stakes: The trial’s outcome could upend the A.I. landscape. A win for Mr. Musk, who has his own for-profit lab, xAI, would also be a win for OpenAI’s competitors, including industry giants like Google and young companies like Anthropic, as well as international competitors such as China’s DeepSeek.
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Trial logistics: Closing arguments will be followed by jury deliberations. If the jury rules in Mr. Musk’s favor, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers — who also oversaw a high-profile lawsuit against Apple over its control of the App Store — will decide on monetary damages and other remedies.
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Statute of limitations: Part of what the jury must decide is whether Mr. Musk brought his suit before the expiration of the statute of limitations. The statute of limitations for his breach of contract claim expires after three years, which means that Mr. Musk’s legal team must show that he was not aware — and had no way of knowing — that OpenAI had breached its founding agreement before August 2021.
