20+ revelations from Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI
Musk v Altman is headed to trial. I read thousands of pages of unsealed evidence in the case. Here are the highlights.
It’s Friday, January 16th. I’ve got something different today: a deep dive into what could be one of the most consequential lawsuits in tech history.
“It really fucking hurts when you publicly attack OpenAI”
Elon Musk first sued OpenAI in February 2024. Despite OpenAI’s repeated attempts to throw it out, the case is now headed to a jury trial on April 27th in Northern California federal court.
Musk’s main allegation is that OpenAI and its leaders abandoned the company’s original nonprofit mission that he funded. In turn, OpenAI has treated Musk’s claims as sour grapes. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers recently decided that the case warranted going to trial, saying in court that “part of this is about whether a jury believes the people who will testify and whether they are credible.”
Last week, thousands of pages of evidence from the case were unsealed, including partial 2025 depositions of most of the key players involved, including Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Mira Murati, and Satya Nadella, along with ex-board members Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley — both of whom played key roles in the 2023 firing of Altman.
Bits and pieces of this evidence have started trickling out in recent days, such as the news that Sutskever owned a whopping $4 billion in vested OpenAI shares when Altman was briefly fired two years ago. Altogether, the unsealed evidence offers a fascinating look not only at OpenAI’s early days but also at the circumstances surrounding Altman’s firing and Microsoft’s complex relationship with OpenAI.
I’ve been covering OpenAI in depth for a while, and I closely reported on the whirlwind few days when Altman was fired and then rehired in late 2023. It’s through that lens that I’ve pulled out the below highlights from the evidence in Musk v. Altman:
