Live updates from Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s court battle over the future of OpenAI

LIVE Updated Today, May 11, 2026, 3:45 PM UTC Live updates from Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s court battle over the future of OpenAI by Elizabeth Lopatto and Hayden Field Link Share RSS Gift Sam Altman and Elon Musk are facing off in a high-stakes trial that could alter the future of OpenAI and its most well-known product, ChatGPT . In 2024, Musk filed a lawsuit accusing OpenAI of abandoning its founding mission of developing AI to benefit humanity and shifting focus to boosting profits instead.

Elon Musk, his financial manager and Neuralink CEO, Jared Birchall, and OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman have already testified before the jury.

Shivon Zilis , a former OpenAI board member who shares four children with Musk, took the stand on Wednesday, and the courtroom also watched former OpenAI CTO Mura Murati’s videotaped deposition .

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is set to appear today, with OpenAI cofounder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever lined up to testify after that.

Musk was a cofounder of OpenAI and claims that Altman and Brockman tricked him into giving the company money, only to turn their backs on their original goal. However, OpenAI says that “This lawsuit has always been a baseless and jealous bid to derail a competitor” in a bid to boost Musk’s own SpaceX / xAI / X companies that have launched Grok as a competitor to ChatGPT.

In his lawsuit, Musk is asking for the removal of Altman and Brockman , and for OpenAI to stop operating as a public benefit corporation. Musk has also demanded that OpenAI’s nonprofit receive up to $150 billion in damages he’s asking for if he wins the case.

People to Know Plaintiff Elon Musk — plaintiff, OpenAI cofounder and now CEO of rival xAI Steven Molo — lead counsel for plaintiff Jared Birchall — manager of Musk’s family office Shivon Zilis — former OpenAI board member who shares multiple children with Musk Defendant Sam Altman — defendant, CEO of OpenAI William Savitt — lead counsel for defendant Greg Brockman — president of OpenAI as well as a cofounder Ilya Sutskever — former chief scientist at OpenAI and a cofounder Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers — aka YGR, trial judge Here’s all the latest on the trial between Musk and Altman: Highlights Musk’s biggest loyalist became his biggest liability Mira Murati tells the court that she couldn’t trust Sam Altman’s words Google’s AI architect lived rent-free in Elon Musk’s head OpenAI’s president does ‘all the things,’ except answer a question Elon Musk’s worst enemy in court is Elon Musk Elon Musk appeared more petty than prepared Musk vs. Altman is here, and it’s going to get messy Elon Musk is about to be a very busy boy!

‘Sideshow’ concerns and billionaire dreams: What I learned from Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI Inside Elon Musk’s messy breakup with OpenAI Today, 13 seconds ago Elizabeth Lopatto Jury is here. We are now finishing a video deposition from Friday about the OAI deal with MSFT.

Michael Wetter, the VP of corporate development at Microsoft, “We’ve recognized $9.5B of total revenue life to date” as of 9/8/2025. He notes there’s context: a $13B investment with OpenAI and Azure compute.

Today, 14 minutes ago Elizabeth Lopatto 👑 “I can’t get my head around why [Musk lawyer] Mr. Molo told me this was not a focus of the trial,” YGR says. “That’s what my ruling is based on.” Today, 15 minutes ago Elizabeth Lopatto We are having an arugment about evidence.

Last week, an expert witness testified about the 2025 recapitalization of OpenAI. OpenAI has said they’d like to include the AG’s conclusions , since the removal of the profit cap was mentioned. YGR is annoyed; she told Musk’s team not to go into detail, and OpenAI didn’t object at the time. “We’re in mud,” she just said. The problem is that Musk’s team is treating it as the crux of the “breach” Musk is alleging.

May 9 Richard Lawler Musk v. Altman week two recap.

What happened in the second week of Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman ?

The Verge senior AI reporter, Hayden Field, can help you catch up .

May 8 Tom Warren Microsoft was worried OpenAI would run off to Amazon and ‘shit-talk’ Azure OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott.

Just days after OpenAI showed a bot beating a Dota 2 professional in the summer of 2017, Altman responded to Nadella’s congratulations email with a proposal for a much bigger partnership with OpenAI to fund its next phase of AI research. OpenAI needed large sums of compute to expand the Dota 2 project, far beyond the Azure credits it was using from Microsoft at the time. “Probably something like $300 million at Azure list prices” according to Altman. This initially spooked some executives inside Microsoft.

It was a unique situation in that the roller coaster of a power play — which seemed to change every hour — took place, in many ways, publicly. The board’s strikingly vague blog post announcing Altman’s ouster was posted on OpenAI’s website, immediately sparking a laundry list of conspiracy theories bandied about on X. (It turned out that the impetus had allegedly been a pattern of lying or omission by Altman, whether about OpenAI’s safety processes, about his own ownership stake in OpenAI’s startup fund, or about the release of certain tools or features like ChatGPT.) Other OpenAI executives and AI industry leaders made public statements in support of Altman. An online campaign began among hundreds of OpenAI employees in which they posted a heart if they supported Altman’s reinstatement, and many posted the phrase, “OpenAI is nothing without its people.” Rumors swirled as countless onlookers waited with bated breath for any new kernel of information. (I covered the whole thing from a backpacking trip in Patagonia, armed with only an iPhone notes app and no laptop.) Read Article > May 7 Elizabeth Lopatto Oh this tack is more effective. Then OpenAI lawyer is going after Columbia...

Which gets something like $2 billion from hospital operations, more than $1 billion in tuition, and an endowment of $16 billion, plus $2.2 billion in philanthropy. Does this mean that Columbia is deviating from its mission to educate kids and support research?

May 7 Elizabeth Lopatto This cross of Schizer is pretty weak.

Like, yes, sure, he doesn’t understand AI, but we have lots of nonprofits, which are governed by the same set of laws. Sure, yes, he’s getting $1,500 per hour from Musk and that is probably a pretty penny — likely more than my annual salary — but also... who cares. I was not overwhelmed by Schizer’s testimony but this cross isn’t doing anything to knock it down for me.

May 7 Elizabeth Lopatto Basically everything Schizer is saying is couched as a hypothetical...

because the jury is engaged in a fact-finding mission. Anyway, of a hypothetical, he says: “You don’t want to be known as a liar.” Evidently Schizer is unfamiliar with the current president of the United States.

May 7 Elizabeth Lopatto We are now hearing from David Schizer, one of Musk’s expert witnesses.

He’s a professor of law and economics at Columbia Law School. He specializes in nonprofits, nonprofit taxation, and management. We are going through an exhaustive list of his qualifications.

May 7 Elizabeth Lopatto We are still listening to McCauley.

Increasingly I feel that the only thing happening here is Musk just trying to remind the world that Altman is untrustworthy. (Ironic!) McCauley’s testimony about the profit incentives is neither here nor there when it comes to the donations and whether any promises were made to Musk.

May 7 Elizabeth Lopatto Tasha McCauley is testifying now in a video deposition.

We are once again going over concerns about Sam Altman’s dishonesty . “Because of this pattern of lying, people in the company were copying that behavior, and there was a culture of lying and a culture of deceit,” she says.

May 7 Elizabeth Lopatto “Do you have any idea how you ended up in this courtroom?” Oh sure, Musk’s team objected and the question was withdrawn, but the OpenAI attorney said what I was thinking. Why is she here? She’s not a board member. She’s not an exec. She didn’t witness any decisions that bear on Musk’s donations. I guess the idea is that she’s testifying that OpenAI abandoned its mission? But we’ve established already that there were no known conditions on Musk’s donation yesterday, with Shivon Zilis.

May 7 Elizabeth Lopatto I am having a hard time taking Rosie Campbell seriously.

Look, I’m not bought in on AGI at all, and the “AGI readiness” team getting disbanded in 2024 happened as it became clearer to everyone but the AI cultists that AGI wasn’t possible. (It was clear to some of us from the jump.) I have no idea how this is landing for the jury, but getting safe, beneficial AGI is silly if AI superintelligence isn’t possible.

It’s the great AGI rebrand Hayden Field Dec 18 May 7 Elizabeth Lopatto We are now hearing from Rosie Campbell, a former OpenAI employee.

She initially worked on the “applied” team, but then moved into a research team because it was “more interesting” to work on the “policy” and “AGI readiness” teams, and think about what to do in the case AGI happened. I also prefer daydreaming to actually working.

May 7 Elizabeth Lopatto OpenAI’s board discussed merging with Anthropic during “the Blip.” They also discussed Dario Amodei becoming CEO of OpenAI. “I thought it was an option worth considering among our set of difficult options,” Toner says.

May 7 Elizabeth Lopatto Helen Toner is now talking about the board’s decision-making process.

Neither Altman or Brockman had been allowed to tell their side of the story, nor were their HR files pulled by the board. There was no input from Microsoft, or any other investors or customers. Toner smiles when she’s frustrated or annoyed, which she sometimes is by this line of questioning.

May 7 Elizabeth Lopatto YGR is back on the bench.

I am expecting a relatively sedate day today. We’re going to see more of former OpenAI board member Helen Toner’s deposition. Right now lawyers are discussing when the case will end; we expect closing arguments a week from today.

Zilis, who testified under oath that she is the mother of four of Musk’s children, was… What’s the best way to characterize this? A Musk adviser? She denies she was a “chief of staff” but says she worked for Musk’s “entire AI portfolio: Tesla, Neuralink, and OpenAI” starting in 2017. The two met through OpenAI, and they had what she referred to as a “one off” before becoming “friends and colleagues.” The “one off,” she confirmed, was “romantic in nature.” Read Article > May 6 Elizabeth Lopatto We are going through the removal of Sam Altman from OpenAI in detail.

It was primarily because Altman was not entirely candid with the board about his interests in an OpenAI startup fund. There was also some drama about Toner’s paper, which Altman told Sutskever that another board member suggested Toner resign from the board. That board member said she’d never said it. Further, Mira Murati and Sutskever also mentioned problems. And, of course, the lack of disclosure of ChatGPT...

May 6 Adi Robertson Toner is relating how Sam Altman’s firing happened.

She says the starting point was Sutskever reaching out to have a conversation where he expressed serious concerns about Altman. It was a “pattern of behavior” that included issues with “honesty and candor” that led to the firing, not any one action. Toner has already laid out some of this in a 2024 podcast, and it’s similar to Murati’s testimony .

May 6 Elizabeth Lopatto Toner says she found out about ChatGPT by seeing screenshots on Twitter.

She wasn’t surprised she hadn’t been told, though, because “I was used to the board not being very informed about things.” She says that “caused me to believe that [Altman] was not motivated to help the board perform the oversight role.” May 6 Elizabeth Lopatto Making AI models is “more like alchemy than chemistry,” Toner says.

That means there’s no clear-cut way to test for safety. People are just throwing things together to see what happens. She refers to OpenAI’s safety board’s methods as becoming “somewhat less slapdash” over time.

May 6 Elizabeth Lopatto We are now looking at Helen Toner’s deposition.

This should be about an hour. YGR has told the jury that if she sees them falling asleep, she’s going stop the video and have them stand and stretch.

May 6 Elizabeth Lopatto Microsoft would like to be excluded from this narrative.

Every time a MSFT lawyer gets up to question a witness in Musk v. Altman , it’s “And Microsoft wasn’t there?” with an occasional addition of “And Satya Nadella wasn’t there either?” This gets funnier every time it happens.

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