The courtroom drama between Elon Musk and OpenAI continues to unfold, offering a rare glimpse into the intense power struggles that shaped one of the world’s most influential AI organizations. On Wednesday, Musk returned to the witness stand, facing a rigorous cross-examination from OpenAI’s lawyers that laid bare his aggressive tactics during a pivotal 2017 period.
The proceedings were charged with tension. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers initiated the day by admonishing a gallery member for attempting to photograph Musk, while OpenAI’s president and co-founder, Greg Brockman, maintained a stern gaze from behind his legal team. Musk, visibly frustrated, frequently interrupted OpenAI’s lawyer, William Savitt, accusing his questions of being misleading, and often claimed a lack of recollection regarding key historical details of OpenAI.
The Battle for Boardroom Dominance
Central to the cross-examination were emails from September 2017, revealing Musk’s concerted effort to seize control as discussions began for OpenAI’s eventual for-profit arm. In a thread with Brockman and researcher Ilya Sutskever, Musk demanded the right to appoint four board members, granting him a majority over his co-founders’ combined three. “I would unequivocally have initial control of the company, but this will change quickly,” Musk asserted in one message.
However, Sutskever firmly rejected this proposition, expressing concerns that such an arrangement would consolidate too much power in Musk’s hands, ultimately thwarting his bid for absolute control.
The Funding Freeze: A Billion-Dollar Pledge Withheld
Months prior to these boardroom skirmishes, Musk had already initiated a significant squeeze on OpenAI: he halted crucial funding. Since 2016, Musk had been the organization’s primary financial backer, committing to quarterly $5 million payments as part of a grander $1 billion pledge made at OpenAI’s inception. Yet, in the spring of 2017, the taps ran dry.
An August 2017 email exchange between Musk and Jared Birchall, head of his family office, confirmed the deliberate nature of this decision. Birchall inquired whether to continue withholding funds, to which Musk’s response was a terse, unequivocal “Yes.” This move placed immense financial strain on the nascent organization.
“They’re Gonna Want to Kill Me”: The Talent Raids
Recruiting for Tesla Vision
As his influence waned at OpenAI, emails presented in court demonstrated Musk’s pivot to actively recruiting its top talent for his other ventures. Despite still serving on OpenAI’s board, Musk engaged in discussions with executives at Tesla and Neuralink about poaching employees.
In June 2017, Musk emailed a Tesla vice president regarding the recruitment of Andrej Karpathy, an early and highly regarded OpenAI researcher. “Just talked to Andrej and he accepted as joining as director of Tesla Vision,” Musk wrote, acknowledging Karpathy as “arguably the #2 guy in the world in computer vision.” He then added a telling remark: “The openai guys are gonna want to kill me, but it had to be done.” On the stand, Musk defended this, claiming Karpathy was already inclined to leave, making Tesla a natural next step.
Neuralink’s Recruitment Drive
The recruitment efforts extended to Neuralink. In October 2017, Musk instructed Ben Rapoport, a Neuralink co-founder: “Hire independently or directly from OpenAI. I have no problem if you pitch people at OpenAI to work at Neuralink.”
When pressed by Savitt, Musk argued that preventing such recruitment would have been illegal. “It’s illegal to restrict employment. It would be illegal to say you can’t employ people from OpenAI. You can’t have some cabal that stops people from working at the company they want to work at,” he stated.
The Shivon Zillis Connection and Future Testimony
Further evidence surfaced from February 2018, in a text exchange between Musk and Shivon Zillis, then an OpenAI board member, a Neuralink executive, and the mother of four of Musk’s children. Musk explicitly stated, “We are going to actively try to move three or four people from OpenAI to Tesla. More than that will join over time, but we won’t actively recruit them.” He also advised Zillis to remain “close and friendly” with OpenAI despite her evolving role and loyalties.
The legal proceedings are far from over. Future sessions promise a deeper dive into Zillis’s role in OpenAI’s trajectory, with Musk’s cross-examination set to continue. Jared Birchall and OpenAI’s Greg Brockman are also slated to appear as witnesses, ensuring more revelations in this high-stakes tech saga.
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