The Elon Musk-Sam Altman courtroom showdown already promised loads of fireworks. And in its first week, dominated by the world’s richest man taking the stand in a federal courthouse in Oakland, Calif., Musk v. Altman delivered quite a lot of whizz-bangs.
Musk’s objectives on the witness stand have been to elucidate his OpenAI lawsuit beneath pleasant questioning from his personal lawyer, and to not look too smug or ignorant beneath questioning from counsel for the OpenAI executives he is suing.
Whether or not he succeeded in both sense is open to query — partly as a result of Musk himself did not appear very open to questions.
However Musk definitely succeeded in making extra folks conscious of his ongoing romantic coparent relationship along with his former chief of employees, and making many people scratch our heads about what, precisely, the favored on-line acronym “TL;DR” stands for.
So let’s dive in to our personal TL;DR: highlights from the Musk testimony we adopted so you do not have to.
1. Musk says that is about ‘looting each charity’
Should you’re Elon Musk, and also you’re making an attempt to elucidate a spat between your self and different billionaires over OpenAI’s nonprofit standing to a jury of 9 Oaklanders who could or could not give a hoot about Silicon Valley, how do you body it?
Easy, apparently: you paint your self because the savior of all charitable trusts, not simply the one behind OpenAI.
“The results of this case go far past me,” Musk advised his lawyer Steve Molo after he took the stand on Tuesday. If OpenAI wins, Musk mentioned, it’s going to set up a precedent that can give “license to looting each charity … all the basis of charitable giving in America can be destroyed.”
(Not talked about: the truth that Musk’s personal charity has failed to present away sufficient cash to qualify for charitable standing, constantly, for the previous 5 years.)
And in the event you discover that end result too hyperbolic, simply wait until you hear Musk’s different repeated declare: that in bringing a go well with over the 2019 change of OpenAI’s nonprofit standing, he’s “saving humanity” from AI that “might kill us all.”
Musk particularly and repeatedly invoked the Terminator films, evidently hoping the jury would draw a connection from ChatGPT to the fully fictional Skynet.
2. OpenAI says that is about Musk’s ‘bitter grapes’
Musk’s telling of the OpenAI story dominated Tuesday, the primary full day after jury choice. Nevertheless it was additionally the day he needed to sit by means of the opening argument for Altman et al., which painted a reasonably clear image of him as properly.
“We’re right here as a result of Musk did not get his manner at OpenAI,” OpenAI lead counsel William Savitt mentioned. “My shoppers had the nerve to go on and succeed with out him. Mr. Musk didn’t like that.”
Savitt famous Musk made no criticism when Microsoft invested in OpenAI in 2019. It was after ChatGPT’s success, beginning in 2022 however actually ramping up in 2023, that “the bitter grapes kicked in,” Savitt mentioned.
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Below Savitt’s questioning on Thursday, Musk mentioned he was wonderful with Microsoft’s $1 billion funding in 2019, however not its $10 million funding in 2022. “This can be a bait and change,” is how he described his pondering on the time.
The decide had already dominated that Musk might get a good trial even when jurors mentioned they did not significantly like him personally, on condition that it is unimaginable within the Bay Space to search out anybody who would not learn about him.
So there’s positively an viewers amongst these 9 for what Savitt is laying down right here. Particularly when Savitt took time on Wednesday to remind jurors on this deeply Democratic city of Musk’s employment by Donald Trump.
3. Musk reluctantly acknowledged a mom of his youngsters
Below favorable questioning Tuesday, Musk recognized Shivon Zillis — a key participant within the early days of OpenAI — as his “chief of employees.” A number of laughs got here from the general public gallery, presumably from those that knew that Zilis additionally occurs to be the mom of Musk’s youngsters, or a minimum of 4 out of 14.
Requested once more about Zilis by his lawyer on Wednesday, Musk got here clear: “We reside collectively and he or she’s the mom of 4 of my youngsters.”
Regardless of this shiftiness a few relationship he already admitted in his deposition was a romantic one, Musk insisted that he did not recall Zilis ever sharing “delicate” details about OpenAI after he departed the corporate in 2019.
4. What is the TL;DR, Elon?
Requested by his lawyer to elucidate the acronym TL;DR, which cropped up in a court docket doc, Musk mentioned it stands for “Too Lengthy, Do not Learn.” As any dictionary will let you know, nonetheless, it is truly Too Lengthy Did not Learn.
Which will simply have been a trivial mistake, however for the truth that Musk seems to have used his model to use to court docket paperwork themselves. On Wednesday, Savitt hammered away at Musk for saying he’d solely learn the primary paragraph of a key OpenAI doc.
On Thursday, the OpenAI counsel performed a section of Musk’s 2025 deposition wherein he’d claimed to have learn the entire thing. TL;DR: OpenAI is doing a reasonably good job of building that Musk’s statements about studying or not studying, a minimum of, are untrustworthy.
5. Musk was testy on the stand, not aided by ‘Regulation 101’
Whomever else Musk could also be convincing along with his testimony, he and his lawyer did not assist their place with Choose Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, a veteran of massive tech trials.
A number of occasions on Wednesday, Gonzalez Rogers berated Molo, Musk’s counsel, for main the witness. “You need to have learn it,” she fired again at Musk and counsel on his TL;DR strategy to trial paperwork. And he or she famous to the jury that Musk was “at occasions tough” beneath OpenAI’s cross-examination.
If something, that is understating the matter. Musk was visibly livid at Savitt for asking “sure or no” questions, a reasonably typical courtroom idea. He mentioned they have been “designed to trick me,” and known as Savitt’s declare that they have been “easy questions” an outright “lie.”
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Musk drew a connection between Savitt’s easy sure or no questions and the traditional instance of a loaded query, “when did you cease beating your spouse?” Gonzalez Rogers shut Musk down on that one: “we’re not going there,” she mentioned.
Simply as soon as, Savitt apologized for what he mentioned “wasn’t a good query.” Earlier than he might reframe it, Musk had some petulant commentary: “I discover it humorous you saying it wasn’t a good query, because you’re solely asking unfair questions.”
Most attorneys in Molo’s place would advise their shoppers to tone it down after a day like that on the witness stand. Whether or not Molo did or not, Musk was at it once more Thursday, the ultimate day of his testimony (though OpenAI reserves the best to name him again later within the trial).
Echoing the decide’s admonishment of his personal lawyer, Musk repeatedly claimed Savitt was main the witness. That’s, nonetheless, one thing that solely applies to pleasant questioning, as Gonzalez Rogers identified.
“That’s not the way it works,” the decide advised the world’s richest man, earlier than dropping the mic: “Let’s remind everybody within the courtroom that you just’re not a lawyer.”
However Musk merely could not keep away from having the final phrase, telling the jury that “I did take Regulation 101 at school.”
As any Regulation 101 professor might inform Musk, nonetheless, he must be glad to be off the witness stand earlier than he made his case any worse for himself.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s guardian firm, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit in opposition to OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in coaching and working its AI programs.
