Sam Altman finally took the witness stand Monday, and he didn’t hold back.

The OpenAI CEO faced the courtroom cameras and answered the question that’s been hanging over Silicon Valley for months: Did OpenAI’s founders betray the mission they all signed up for?

Elon Musk says yes, Altman says the opposite. And one jaw-dropping story about Musk’s children may have just changed the entire conversation.

Musk’s Claim

Musk’s lawsuit accuses OpenAI’s founders of stealing a charity. His legal team argues that when OpenAI launched a for-profit arm to sell products built on its AI models, it broke a promise. 

That promise was simple: keep powerful AI out of private hands. Altman didn’t mince words when asked about that accusation.

“It feels difficult to even wrap my head around that framing,” he said, pausing for several seconds before answering. “We created one of the largest charities in the world. 

This foundation is doing incredible work and will do much more.” That foundation now holds roughly $200 billion in assets. It’s no small operation.

Also read: OpenAI Is Having a Rough 2026 – And It Shows

Stolen Charity

Musk’s attorneys pointed out something curious. The OpenAI Foundation reportedly had no full-time employees until earlier this year.

That sounds bad on the surface. But OpenAI board chair Bret Taylor explained that the delay came down to a practical problem: turning OpenAI equity into actual cash is complicated. 

The company’s most recent 2025 restructuring finally made that possible. So the foundation didn’t sit idle out of neglect. It was waiting on the financial machinery to catch up.

Hair-raising Moment 

Altman described a 2017 conversation that clearly stuck with him. The founders were wrestling with a big question: how do you raise enough money to train world-changing AI models without losing control of the mission?

Musk wanted to control a potential for-profit version of OpenAI himself. Someone in the room asked him a pointed question. What happens to the company if you die?

Altman says Musk’s answer was this: “Maybe OpenAI should pass to my children.” Altman called it a “particularly hair-raising moment.” And it’s easy to see why.

OpenAI’s entire mission is to stop any single person from controlling advanced AI. The idea of a tech dynasty inheriting that power was the opposite of everything the organization stood for.

Altman also had a practical read on the situation. His years running Y Combinator, the famous startup accelerator, had taught him one thing clearly. “Founders who had control usually did not give it up.”

Management Style

Altman didn’t just criticize Musk’s vision. He went after his management style, too. “I don’t think Mr. Musk understood how to run a good research lab,” Altman said plainly.

He described Musk pushing OpenAI’s top researchers, including co-founders Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever, to rank employees by their accomplishments. 

Then he allegedly told them to “take a chainsaw through a bunch.” That kind of brutal stack-ranking might work in a car factory. 

At a research lab full of world-class scientists, it caused lasting damage. “That did huge damage for a long time to the culture of the organization,” Altman said.

Brockman and Sutskever were the ones actually running OpenAI day-to-day at the time. Musk and Altman both had other jobs. 

So Altman framed his fight in court partly as defending their “sweat equity”, the real work they’d poured into building the organization.

Musk’s Departure 

Musk eventually walked away from OpenAI’s board. Then he launched competing AI efforts at Tesla and his own startup, xAI. But it wasn’t a clean break.

Altman kept the lines of communication open. He updated Musk on OpenAI’s progress; he sought his money and his advice.

OpenAI’s lawyers made sure to highlight that fact in court – Musk wasn’t shut out. He was kept in the loop. He was even invited to participate in the very investments his lawsuit now calls corrupt.

Microsoft Meeting

He described a 2018 discussion about a Microsoft investment in OpenAI. Most meetings with Musk were high-pressure. This one was different.

“Unlike a lot of meetings with Mr. Musk, this was a good vibes meeting,” Altman said with a hint of a smile. 

He recalled Musk spending a long stretch of the meeting showing everyone memes on his phone.