- Elon Musk claims OpenAI wouldn’t exist without his early backing
- Trial reveals tensions over control, direction, and original mission
- Courtroom exchanges show how personal the dispute has become
“Without me, OpenAI wouldn’t exist!”
The outburst from Elon Musk came in a heated moment during the OpenAI trial, when OpenAI’s lawyer, William Savitt, probed Musk about his contributions to OpenAI. As reported by CNBC, the exchange continued with Musk saying, “I contributed my reputation!”, adding that he named the company, and, “These things all have value.”
The outburst was prompted by Savitt asking Musk to confirm that his donations amounted to $38 million, which fell short of the “up to $1 billion” Musk had offered the non-profit.
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Savitt also asked Musk if OpenAI used money donated by him to pay rent at the Pioneer Building, which Musk had leased and which was also used by his other company, Neuralink.
“You were on the hook for the entire lease, weren’t you?” the lawyer asked. Musk said yes, but he would have found another sub-tenant if he had not rented it out to OpenAI.
Getting personal
As the legal battle between Musk and Sam Altman continued in court this week, this was the moment that neatly captured the tone of a trial that has kept drifting away from technical arguments and into something more personal and alarmist — Musk has even been making Terminator references.
At its core, the case is about the future direction of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. But moments like this make it clear that it is also about the past — specifically, who gets to claim credit for building the company in the first place.
Musk has long argued that his early involvement and funding were critical to OpenAI’s creation, framing the company as something closer to a mission-driven effort that, in the pursuit of profit, has since lost its way. Altman and OpenAI, by contrast, have positioned the company’s evolution as a necessary response to the realities of building and scaling modern AI systems.
A clash of egos
That clash of perspectives has played out in increasingly direct terms during the trial. Alongside broader arguments about governance, safety, and commercialization, the courtroom has seen flashes of frustration, disbelief, and competing versions of the same origin story.
Musk maintained that “$38 million is still a lot of money” and that the value of his contributions to OpenAI was worth much more, but it feels more like he is trying to stake his personal place in history as not just the financial backer of the company, but also the most important founder.
For Musk, this is clearly personal, and as the trial continues, those questions are unlikely to get any less so. If anything, they are becoming the story.
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