Elon Musk texted OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman two days before trial to discuss settling the lawsuit over OpenAI's conversion from a nonprofit to a for-profit company. Brockman proposed that Musk drop all claims against the individuals. Musk replied: "By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be."
The exchange, disclosed in a court filing on Sunday, was not shown to the jury. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that settlement communications are inadmissible. But the text captures the dynamic that has defined the first week of the most consequential AI trial in history: a dispute that both sides had the opportunity to resolve privately, and that both sides chose to fight publicly.
The trial
Musk is suing OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Brockman, alleging that approximately $38 million he donated to the nonprofit was used for unauthorized commercial purposes. He is seeking tens of billions of dollars in damages, the removal of Altman and Brockman from their positions, and the unwinding of the for-profit conversion that OpenAI completed in October 2025, when it restructured into OpenAI Group PBC with an $852 billion valuation, the OpenAI Foundation retaining a 26 percent stake, and Microsoft holding 27 percent.
Musk dominated the first week on the stand, testifying over three days, calling himself "a fool" for funding OpenAI, accusing its leadership of "looting the nonprofit," and repeatedly telling the jury: "You can't just steal a charity." Under cross-examination, he clashed with OpenAI's lawyers, who pressed him on his competing AI company xAI, which he valued at $250 billion in its February merger with SpaceX while describing it in court as a fraction of OpenAI's size. Musk acknowledged that xAI had "partly" used OpenAI's technology to train its own models through distillation.
The journals
Brockman's testimony is expected to be more damaging to his own side than to Musk's, because the most cited evidence against OpenAI's leadership comes from Brockman's personal journals. In entries that Musk's lawyers obtained through discovery, Brockman wrote: "Financially, what will take me to $1B?" In another entry, he described his public commitment to OpenAI's nonprofit mission as "a lie."
Judge Gonzalez Rogers cited these journal entries in January when she denied OpenAI's motion to dismiss the case, writing that the entries "suggest Brockman intended to deceive" about the organization's charitable purpose. OpenAI's lawyers have fought to contextualize the journals, arguing that the entries are "staged for maximum misrepresentation," cherry-picked from hundreds of