Is Musk a victim?

Author: Sleepy

In May 2026, in the Oakland Federal Court, the filters surrounding OpenAI were peeled away layer by layer.

What was presented to the jury was a Rashomon-like affair rife with intrigue:

Greg Brockman's private diary, interwoven with anxiety and calculation; Elon Musk's unwavering stance on power; Sam Altman's ethical dilemmas teetering on the edge; Microsoft's vast reflection between computing power and capital; and the dramatic yet hastily concluded board coup at the end of 2023.

Amidst this messy situation, there's another seemingly big question, but one that becomes incredibly specific in court: Does OpenAI's promise to "benefit all of humanity" still hold true? As of May 15, 2026, the trial has not yet reached a final verdict, and the jury's opinion remains undecided. But one thing has undeniably happened: OpenAI has been dragged down from mythology and brought back to reality. In the past few years, OpenAI has often been portrayed as a story about the future. ChatGPT became a sensation, Altman traveled the world, and large models were incorporated into offices, schools, mobile phones, and company processes. This is a company born with a religious sense of nobility, speaking of humanity's destiny, the awakening of intelligence, the boundaries of security, and the dawn of tomorrow—like a lighthouse built in advance for humanity. But the court doesn't care about that. The court asks for the facts. "All of humanity" on the witness stand. In 2015, when OpenAI was born, it was still innocent. It claimed to be a non-profit AI research company, aiming to maximize the benefits of digital intelligence for all humanity without the pressure of financial returns. Altman and Musk were co-chairs, Brockman was CTO, and Ilya Sutskever was head of research. At that time, OpenAI seemed to retain the last vestiges of idealism from Silicon Valley's golden age: the smartest people weren't working for any particular company, but rather safeguarding the future of humanity. Ten years later, this promise was taken to court. Musk's side claims that Altman, Brockman, and OpenAI obtained his funding and trust through a non-profit mission, but later shifted to a for-profit structure, benefiting individuals and Microsoft. OpenAI's side argues that Musk's money was a donation, unconditional; he knew about the for-profit structure was discussed but didn't gain control; he's suing now because he regrets leaving and because his xAI has become a competitor to OpenAI. Both sides' arguments are quite harsh. Musk positions himself as a guardian of his mission. OpenAI positions him as an out-of-control founder. One side said, "You stole the charity," the other said, "You just couldn't control it." In the end, the most awkward thing wasn't which side was better at storytelling, but that the repeatedly mentioned "all of humanity" never actually sat at the table. The phrase "all of humanity" appeared in the founding announcement, bylaws, speeches, and media reports, occupying the moral high ground. But in court, it was broken down into pieces of evidence: Did Brockman's diary represent true intent? What did the 2017 emails reveal? What exactly did OpenAI LP transfer in 2019? Did Microsoft's cloud and money change the company's direction? Can Altman's integrity issues support the company continuing to say "trust us"? The more an AI company likes to claim it represents humanity, the more specific the questions it should be asked: Who are you referring to as "humanity"? Who signed on behalf of these people? Who can replace you? Who can audit the accounts? Who can say no? The courts couldn't answer these questions for the public, but they brought them to the forefront. OpenAI's story therefore no longer resembles the growth history of a future company, but rather an old saga. Once the books were laid bare, it became clear that the cracks didn't appear only after ChatGPT's meteoric rise. The cracks of 2017... OpenAI didn't suddenly change. If you only look at the ChatGPT proceedings, you might mistakenly think that OpenAI was driven by money after its initial success, like many companies that talk about ideals first and then consider business. But if we rewind the clock to 2017, OpenAI didn't have the buzz it has today, and AGI wasn't yet a buzzword. However, the founding team already faced a problem: if they truly wanted to build general artificial intelligence, donations and passion alone wouldn't be enough. This was the most difficult time for Silicon Valley idealism. The bigger the ideal, the bigger the bill. The bigger the bill, the harder it is for the organization to stay clean. All those speeches full of visions for all humanity ultimately came down to chips, servers, engineer salaries, cloud resources, and long-term capital. Without these, AGI is just a dream; with these, non-profit becomes unsustainable. In 2017, OpenAI internally began discussing various paths, including for-profit affiliate, B-corp, partnerships with existing companies, and reliance on Tesla. Musk had proposed that OpenAI rely on Tesla as a source of funding. OpenAI countered that Musk wasn't simply against for-profit; control was his unavoidable demand. Another memorable scene from that year was Dota. After OpenAI's AI defeated top human players in Dota 1v1, the team realized more strongly for the first time that this might actually have the potential to scale. The trial mentioned a discussion that took place in Musk's San Francisco house, later known as the haunted mansion meeting, where they celebrated technological breakthroughs and discussed whether OpenAI should move towards a for-profit model. Many companies begin to reinterpret themselves after their products become successful. OpenAI did it earlier. Before it became the behemoth it is today, the founders already knew that a non-profit structure couldn't support the AGI narrative. OpenAI's ideals required a heavier machine to sustain them from the very beginning. Thus, an organization that appeared to be about scientific safety quickly entered into control negotiations. Who will steer the ship? Musk or Altman? Or the nonprofit board or future investors? Or that "all of humanity" that never truly appeared? Looking at Musk now, he was certainly a key early funder and did indeed participate in establishing OpenAI's nonprofit narrative. But he was also one of the first in this story to see the immense power AI could bring. Having seen it, he wanted to hold onto it tightly. Musk's Steering Wheel Musk repeatedly emphasized one thing during the trial: OpenAI was stolen. This wording is powerful. It condenses a complex organization into a statement that ordinary people can understand. A charity, originally meant to serve humanity, later became a giant commercial machine. It sounds like misappropriation, and also like a moral betrayal. But the story in court is not so simple. OpenAI's lawyers' cross-examination of Musk focused on dismantling his image as a mere victim. The lawyer presented emails and documents, pressing him on whether he knew all along that OpenAI might require a profit-making structure, and whether he had ever considered absorbing OpenAI through Tesla, or gaining dominance in other ways. Musk disliked this dissecting approach. In court, he said the opposing side was "tricking me." The judge repeatedly asked him to answer directly. When he tried to steer the conversation towards the risk of AI extinction, the judge also cautioned that this case wouldn't involve much discussion of extinction. These scenes aptly illustrate Musk's character. He's accustomed to grand narratives. The fate of humanity, the risks of AI, Mars, free expression, and the survival of civilization are all topics he loves to discuss. But the court asked him smaller, more pointed questions: When did you find out? Did you agree to it? Did you want to control it? Was your money in OpenAI a donation or an investment? Musk's contradictions are the contradictions of the OpenAI story. He may genuinely fear AI going out of control, or he may genuinely believe OpenAI has strayed from its mission. But this doesn't stop him from wanting the company to operate according to his own will. The more someone believes they are saving humanity, the more stubbornly they believe they should be in control. This isn't just Musk's problem. It's the underlying theme of many grand narratives in Silicon Valley. They like to portray private will as a human mission, control as a sense of responsibility, and organizational power as a future necessity. Musk simply made it more outward, more intense, and more visible. So, in this case, Musk is not just the prosecutor; he is also the evidence itself. Greg Brockman wasn't originally the most prominent figure in this drama. Musk is too dramatic, Altman too central, Sutskever too tragic, and Microsoft too large. Brockman is caught in the middle; he was an early core founder of OpenAI and a key figure in the company's later operations. But this trial thrust him into the spotlight because his personal diary became evidence. During the second week of the trial, Brockman was repeatedly questioned about his diaries, emails, and text messages. Musk's side used these materials to prove that he and Altman had long harbored self-interested motives. OpenAI's side said that Musk was taking things out of context. The diaries contained wealth goals, anxieties about the company's revenue path, and phrases like "making the billions." More jarringly, the diaries contained self-reminders about not stealing "non-profit" funds from Musk, lest they face moral bankruptcy. Musk's lawyers repeatedly pressed him on these points. Brockman denied deceiving Musk, stating that these private writings were not a record of events but rather stream-of-consciousness personal writing. The diaries are not a judgment. They cannot directly prove they committed fraud. They may also contain rough thoughts written down when a person is tired, anxious, or indulging in self-reflection. Every writer knows that personal notes are not a final stance, much less a complete account of the facts. The true importance of Brockman's diary lies not in what crimes it proves, but in how it demonstrates their awareness of boundaries. The early core figures of OpenAI did not blindly embrace commercialization. They knew the moral weight of the "non-profit" facade, the trust built by Musk's early funding, and the dishonesty of switching to a different structure a few months later while still claiming unwavering commitment to non-profit. Knowing this does not equate to stopping. Brockman disclosed in court that his OpenAI equity stake was worth nearly $30 billion. While this number isn't cash, not already cash in hand, it represents the equity value under valuation, still dependent on the company's prospects and the transaction structure. But the symbolic meaning is enough. A person who once worried about ethical boundaries in his private diary later sat in court, asked about the nearly $30 billion worth of OpenAI equity he held. Philanthropic mission and private wealth were placed on the same table at that moment. Brockman, like many key figures in excellent organizations, is intelligent, dedicated, capable, and has a sense of shame, gradually convincing himself to keep going. The most complex aspect of OpenAI lies here. It's not a group of bad people conspiring to destroy ideals. It's more like a group of intelligent people who can find reasons to continue at every stage, ultimately bringing their initial promises into a machine they themselves may not fully control. And at the center of this machine is Altman. Altman's Debt of Trust Sam Altman was questioned in this trial not just about the truth or falsehood of his statements. Musk's real attack is on his right to rule. In his closing arguments, Musk's lawyer, Steven Molo, placed Altman's integrity at the heart of the case. He told the jury that Musk, Sutskever, Murati, Toner, and McCauley—five people who had worked with Altman for many years—called him a "liar." These five names are more important than the charges themselves. Musk is an adversary and could be considered to have a conflict of interest. But Sutskever is a co-founder and former chief scientist of OpenAI; Murati was the CTO and briefly served as interim CEO in 2023; Toner and McCauley are former board members. They are people within OpenAI's internal power structure. We cannot simply and crudely say that Altman is a good person or a bad person. The feelings towards Altman within OpenAI are clearly complex. He propelled the organization to the center of the world stage, but also made some key figures uneasy. He possesses exceptional organizational, fundraising, media, and political acumen, which has led the company to its current position. When the board removed Altman in 2023, OpenAI's official reason was that his communication with the board was "not consistently candid." Altman returned a few days later. In 2024, OpenAI released a summary of the WilmerHale investigation, acknowledging a breakdown of trust between the former board and Altman, but also believing that the board acted too hastily, failing to notify key stakeholders in advance, and failing to conduct a full investigation or give Altman an opportunity to respond. These stories, when pieced together, reveal Altman's true debt of trust. He is not a hero in the traditional sense. He has the face of a Silicon Valley upstart: he can talk about mission, raise funds, organize talent, handle the media, negotiate with large corporations, and transform a lab into a world-class company. The greater his abilities, the bigger the problem: if a company relies on his personal credibility to assure the world "we want to benefit all mankind," then his credibility is no longer a matter of private character, but a matter of public governance. Altman also offered his own counterattack in court. He claimed that Musk repeatedly tried to get Tesla to absorb OpenAI, which contradicted OpenAI's mission. He also said that OpenAI has actually created enormous philanthropic value. This is OpenAI's dilemma. It can argue that it remains under nonprofit control, or that commercialization gives nonprofits greater value; but to the average person, it's hard not to ask: if a public mission relies on a hugely valued company and a powerful CEO to uphold it, is it a mission or a loan of trust? In 2023, the board tried to recover this loan. It failed. Mission Loses to Reality. OpenAI's board isn't entirely powerless. On paper, the nonprofit board holds oversight power over the mission. When OpenAI LP was established in 2019, OpenAI explained that it was a capped-profit structure, with employee and investor returns capped and any excess going to the non-profit, while the overall structure remained under non-profit control. This design sounded like a compromise, allowing for fundraising without completely relinquishing its mission. The problem is, reality has developed far faster than the charter. After 2019, OpenAI's ties with Microsoft deepened. Microsoft invested capital, provided cloud and supercomputing, and acquired commercialization rights. Court documents show that a large amount of OpenAI's intellectual property and employees were transferred to for-profit entities. By the ChatGPT era, OpenAI was no longer just a research institution, but a commercial system connecting users, customers, developers, cloud resources, investors, and global competition. Such a system cannot be stopped with the push of a button. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was asked in court about Microsoft's $13 billion investment in OpenAI and the potential return of approximately $92 billion if successful. His response essentially stated that if the pie gets bigger, non-profit organizations will also benefit. This logic is typical: commercialization is not a departure from the mission, but rather an expansion of the mission's funding sources. However, in the same set of testimonies, text messages between Nadella and Altman regarding the launch of a paid version of ChatGPT were also mentioned. Nadella asked when the paid version would be available, and Altman said that the computing power was insufficient and the user experience was not yet good enough, but Nadella was in a hurry and said the sooner the better. Once OpenAI and Microsoft were tied together, product timelines, customer commitments, computing power limitations, and commercial returns became intertwined. The board could discuss the mission, but Microsoft had to ensure the customer experience; the board could worry about security issues, but users and businesses were already using it; the board could remove the CEO, and employees, investors, partners, and public opinion would immediately swarm in. Nadella's views on the 2023 board crisis are also important. He said he didn't receive a clear reason for Altman's removal and criticized the board for handling things like an "amateur city." More importantly, he was prepared to send Altman and other employees to Microsoft if they couldn't return to OpenAI. This is reality. A nonprofit board may seem to hold the steering wheel, but the engine, accelerator, fuel, and passengers are no longer solely under its control. When an AI company has already connected with huge valuations, cloud vendors, enterprise customers, employee stock options, and global users, it's difficult for a mission-driven board to truly apply the brakes. The bigger the AGI narrative, the bigger the computing bill; the bigger the computing bill, the more cloud giants are needed; the more cloud giants are needed, the less likely the mission can be protected solely by bylaws. In the AI ​​era, computing power is not a backend resource. Computing power itself is power. Whoever provides computing power participates in defining how fast a company can go, where it can go, and who it serves. Whoever can bear the cost of training failures can demand the benefits of success. Whoever can guarantee continued orders from enterprise clients will have more say than the board of directors during a crisis. This trial truly made the whole thing clear to us. It tells us that it wasn't just one person who destroyed the ideal; without a sufficiently robust institutional framework, an ideal will eventually grow a realistic skeleton. That skeleton may not be evil, but it will certainly no longer be innocent. Users are not bystanders. Musk, Altman, Brockman, Nadella—these are all names far removed from our lives. The hundreds of billions of dollars in damage claims, nearly $30 billion in equity value, $13 billion in investment, and $92 billion in potential returns—these numbers are distorted. For the average person, sitting in an office, commuting on the subway in the morning, and scrolling through TikTok at night, their relationship with AI might simply be opening an app and asking: "Help me revise a proposal, write some code, or translate an email." But here's the problem. OpenAI is no longer a distant laboratory. Its models are entering writing, translation, programming, search, customer service, education, office software, and enterprise processes. An average person may not know whether OpenAI is an LP, LLC, or PBC, nor may they care whether Altman or Musk is a better storyteller, but they are constantly using AI. Children use it for homework, and schools have to decide how to deal with AI-generated essays; programmers use it to write code, and companies have to decide how to measure human output; media professionals use it to research, outline, and revise headlines, and readers are faced with even more content whose sources are unclear; businesses integrate it into customer service and approval processes, and employees find their time and performance being squeezed by the system. We once thought we were just users. But users use tools, and tools also shape users. What can the model answer, and what can't it answer? What content is considered safe, and what content is considered risky? Which companies can use more powerful models, and which people can only use the packaged versions? Which languages, professions, regions, and knowledge are better supported, and which are treated poorly? These questions seem very technical, but ultimately they all come down to the lives of ordinary people. Therefore, the OpenAI trial is actually a window. Through this window, people can see that the manufacturing process of future infrastructure is neither clean nor transparent. There are smart people, ideals, fears, ambitions, equity, cloud bills, boardroom infighting, and some private documents that no one expected to be read aloud. Water, electricity, roads, schools, hospitals, search engines, mobile phone systems—once these things enter daily life, they are no longer just commercial products. AI is also moving towards this position. It may not be as stable as water and electricity yet, but it is already becoming as relied upon as water and electricity. A person can live without a particular chatbot, but it is difficult to forever bypass the workflows, information access points, and organizational rules transformed by AI. Regardless of who wins this trial, ordinary users will most likely continue to use AI the next day. Students will use it to revise their essays, programmers will use it to supplement their code, companies will integrate it into their systems, and entrepreneurs will use it to develop applications. But the court at least peeled back a layer of the veil. It tells us that the AI ​​entering daily life didn't grow from a transparent, stable machine operating solely for the public good. They come from a group of specific people, a complex set of contracts, cloud computing bills, a boardroom coup, some private diaries, and a power struggle. This isn't a story that can be told simply as "capital corrupting ideals." The more real, and more unsettling aspect is that AI is becoming infrastructure for ordinary people, but its steering wheel remains in the hands of a few. When the future begins to be productized, ordinary people can't just be users. The content of this court hearing, apart from the organizational structure and historical facts confirmed by publicly available documents, is based on court testimonies, closing arguments, and statements from both sides regarding the determination of individuals' motives and responsibilities. As of May 15, 2026, the court has not yet issued a final ruling.