Musk mulled handing OpenAI to his children, Altman testifies

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman finally took the stand this morning to defend himself against his former cofounder Elon Musk’s lawsuit challenging OpenAI’s corporate structure. Altman was asked out of the gate what he thought of Musk’s allegation that OpenAI’s other founders “stole a charity” when they launched a for-profit subsidiary to market products based on the company’s AI models. “It feels difficult to even wrap my head around that framing,” Altman said after several seconds of silence. “We created one of the largest charities in the world. This foundation is doing incredible work and will do much more.” Musk’s attorneys have been at pains to point out that OpenAI’s foundation, which now has assets on the order of $200 billion, didn’t have full-time employees until earlier this year. OpenAI board chair Bret Taylor testified today that was simply because of the challenge of converting OpenAI equity to cash, which was accomplished with the organization’s most recent restructuring in 2025. The central question posed by Musk’s lawyers is whether the company’s commitment to safety had been left behind as its commercial power grew. But Altman said that in 2017, during a pivotal period when the founders wrestled with how to obtain the funding to power their AI models, Musk’s “specific plans on safety made me worry.” He described a “particularly hair-raising moment” in the debate when Musk was asked what would happen if he died while controlling a hypothetical OpenAI for-profit. …