Musk revives fraud claims against OpenAI, 2015 emails show control push began day one

Elon Musk spent Tuesday morning framing OpenAI as his personal firewall against a "Terminator outcome," telling jurors he launched the lab in 2015 only because Google co-founder Larry Page "called me a speciesist" for warning about runaway AI. The moment landed like theater and drew an eye-roll from Sam Altman's counsel, but it set the tone for a trial that's already more reality show than contract dispute.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers opened the session by scolding both billionaires for trading Twitter pot-shots over the weekend. "This isn't a marketing campaign," she warned. "Curb your propensity to use social media to make things worse outside the courtroom." The slap-down came after Musk posted a meme of Altman as a James Bond villain and Altman replied with a shrug emoji.

Musk's origin story hinged on a single conversation with Larry Page in 2014. Page, he testified, dismissed AI safety concerns and "refused to speak to me ever again" after Musk pushed for oversight. The Google co-founder's alleged parting shot — "You're a speciesist" — became Musk's justification for bankrolling a non-profit competitor. "I thought humanity should have an alternative," he said.

Under cross-examination Musk admitted he'd never mentioned the "speciesist" line in earlier depositions, shrugging: "I didn't think it was relevant then." Altman's lawyers pounced, suggesting Musk retrofitted the anecdote for jury appeal. Courtroom sketch artists caught Altman smirking.

A trove of newly unsealed emails from 2015 reveals Musk wasn't just a hands-off funder in OpenAI's early days. Within weeks of the company's incorporation, Musk emailed co-founders demanding "final decision authority" over research directions and threatened to withhold promised funding unless his control terms were met. The messages, which OpenAI's lawyers fought to keep sealed, show Musk proposing a governance structure where he could unilaterally dissolve the non-profit if it strayed from its safety mission.

One particularly blunt exchange from July 2015 has Musk writing: "If I don't have veto power over publication decisions, what's to stop you from releasing something dangerous just to get famous?" The emails also capture early tension over commercialization, with Musk warning that any pivot toward profit-making would make the team "no better than the Google people we're trying to stop."

Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla followed Musk and delivered the day's sharpest dagger. He testified that Musk tried to install himself as OpenAI CEO in late 2017 and threatened to pull future funding unless the board agreed. Khosla said Musk's ultimatum came during a tense dinner at Palo Alto's Evvia restaurant, where Musk allegedly declared: "Either I run this thing or I'm taking my money and building something better."

The $50 million figure represents the amount Musk had pledged but not yet delivered when tensions boiled over. Khosla's testimony directly contradicts Musk's claim that he only soured on OpenAI after learning about its secret for-profit plans. "He wanted control from day one," Khosla told the jury. "The safety stuff was always cover for empire-building."

Taking the stand again Wednesday, Musk painted OpenAI's other founders as opportunists who "smelled money" once ChatGPT started working. He described a December 2022 meeting where he claims Altman and others discussed spinning out a for-profit entity "to make billions like the Google guys." Musk's voice reportedly cracked when recounting how he felt "personally betrayed" by people he'd trusted to protect humanity.

The testimony revealed Musk's specific grievance: he believed OpenAI's charter required any artificial general intelligence breakthrough to remain non-profit and open-source. When pressed by Altman's lawyers about whether he'd read the actual incorporation documents, Musk admitted he hadn't reviewed them since 2015 but insisted the "spirit was obvious to everyone in the room."

The trial continues Thursday with expected testimony from Sam Altman himself, who'll face questions about those 2015 emails and whether early discussions about commercialization contradict OpenAI's founding mission. The jury has already seen texts between Altman and Musk that suggest a more complicated relationship than either side has presented. One message from Musk in 2022 reads: "I still think we can work together if you just stop trying to be Steve Jobs."

Judge Rogers has indicated she wants closing arguments by early next week, telling both legal teams: "The public has heard enough billionaire drama. Time to focus on whether contracts were actually broken."