"I was a fool."
Elon Musk · on himself Under oath · 30 April 2026
Courtroom Dispatch · Oakland · Weeks 1–3
$38 Million
Scorned.
He wrote the founding cheque. They built it without him. He wanted $134 billion and Sam's job. The jury said no.
OAKLAND — It started, as these things do, with a dinner and a dream. It ended, as these things do, in federal court — with a verdict that took less than two hours and settled nothing on the merits.
A nine-person jury in Oakland on Monday afternoon found that Elon Musk's $134 billion lawsuit against OpenAI, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and Microsoft was untimely. Musk had known about OpenAI's for-profit pivot since at least 2021, the jury found, and the statute of limitations had expired three years before he filed suit. All claims: not liable. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers dismissed from the bench. In the hallway outside the courtroom, OpenAI's lawyers hugged. William Savitt, their lead counsel, said he was "delighted." Musk says he'll appeal. He has also, in the hours since, called the judge a "terrible activist Oakland judge" who "simply used the jury as a fig leaf," and accused her of issuing "a free license to loot charities." He posted these things on his own social-media platform, which he owns, where they remain in the public record.
The math, for those just tuning in: Musk donated roughly $38 million in OpenAI's non-profit years (2015–2017). He was seeking as much as $134 billion in damages, the removal of Altman and Brockman, and a forced reversion to the original non-profit charter. OpenAI called the suit "baseless." The jury never reached that question.
It took three weeks of testimony to get to a 90-minute deliberation. Here's what happened in between.
"I actually was a fool."
Eleven years after he wrote the founding cheque, Musk took the stand and called himself one. "I actually was a fool," he told the court on April 30. "I literally was. I gave them $38 million of essentially free funding which they then used to create an $800 billion for-profit company." The remark was delivered to a jury, under oath, on the third day of his own testimony. It was so candid that even Musk's own lawyers, per courtroom observers, appeared briefly unsure where to put their faces.
The painting.
Week 2 brought the trial's most cinematic set piece. Greg Brockman testified that in August 2017, he and co-founder Ilya Sutskever met with Musk to discuss OpenAI's future. Sutskever had brought Musk a Tesla-related painting as a gift. The meeting opened warmly. It did not stay that way.
When Brockman and Sutskever rejected Musk's demand for majority control, Musk — per Brockman's sworn testimony — got up and walked toward him. "I thought he was going to hit me," Brockman told the court. "I thought he was going to physically attack me."
"I thought he was going to hit me."
— Greg Brockman, sworn · on Musk, August 2017
Musk then, allegedly, told Brockman: "When will you be departing OpenAI? I will withhold funding until you decide what you are going to do," grabbed Sutskever's painting off the table, and stormed out of the room.
Hereditary OpenAI.
In the trial's second week, Sam Altman took the stand and described what he called a "hair-raising" 2017 conversation in which OpenAI's co-founders asked Musk what would happen to the company if Musk had majority control and then died. "I haven't thought about it a ton," Musk replied, per Altman's sworn account. "Maybe I should pass it to my children." Musk has fourteen children, per public reporting and his own testimony in this trial. The non-profit's original mission, Altman testified, was specifically to prevent AGI from being controlled "by any one person, no matter how good their intents are." It was not, on the record, designed to be inherited by all of them.
"The wind."
The trial's other plot twist arrived by video. In November 2023, OpenAI's board abruptly fired Sam Altman; five days later, after a near-mutiny by staff and investors, he was reinstated. Helen Toner, a former OpenAI board member who voted to fire him, gave a video deposition for this trial. She described Mira Murati — OpenAI's then-Chief Technology Officer, who briefly stepped in as interim CEO during those five days — as "strikingly unsupportive, remarkably passive." Per Toner, Murati "was waiting to see which way the wind would blow. She didn't realize that she was the wind." Murati's "directionally very bad" text — sent to Altman during the firing, now in evidence — had briefly made her the trial's most sympathetic witness. Toner's deposition complicated that.
What happens next.
Antitrust claims against Microsoft and OpenAI remain on the docket, slated for a potential second stage. Judge Gonzalez Rogers called them "not very good claims" given the state of competition in the AI market, but she has not dismissed them.
Sam Altman is now free to solidify his hold on OpenAI, which appears headed toward one of the largest initial public offerings in history, and to pursue a data center expansion that could cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
The painting remains, presumably, in storage.
