OpenAI's Sam Altman takes the stand to fend off Elon Musk's accusations he 'stole a charity'

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman walks inside the federal courthouse during a recess in the proceedings in the trial over Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI in Oakland, California, on May 12, 2026. JOSH EDELSON/AFP via hide caption toggle caption JOSH EDELSON/AFP via OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took the stand on Tuesday to defend himself against accusations from co-founder-turned-adversary Elon Musk that he " stole a charity " by converting the maker of ChatGPT into a for-profit juggernaut . The trial, now in its third week, pits two of the tech world's biggest personalities against one another in a high-stakes clash that could usher in major changes for one of the world's leading artificial intelligence companies and potentially alter the AI landscape. Musk's lawyers made the case that OpenAI, Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman, with the help of investments from Microsoft, jettisoned OpenAI's founding mission of being a non-profit focused on creating advanced AI for the benefit of humanity. Instead, the Musk team argues that they enriched themselves by creating a for-profit subsidiary that now effectively controls the nonprofit. OpenAI's legal team has argued that Musk is motivated by sour grapes and is out to damage a competitor. And on the stand Tuesday, Altman pushed back against the notion that Musk actually cares about OpenAI. "Mr. …