"Closing arguments in Musk v. Altman wrapped on Thursday afternoon in Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers's Oakland courtroom, sending the nine-person jury home for the weekend and into deliberations that begin Monday. Three weeks of testimony, depositions, and a parade of Silicon Valley witnesses, including Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella, and Elon Musk himself, have reduced to two competing summary readings: that Altman and Brockman "stole a charity," as Musk's counsel told the jury, or that Musk "didn't get his way at OpenAI," as the defence framed it."
"Musk was not in the room for the closing. His attorney issued an apology on his behalf to the jury, citing his presence on Donald Trump's Beijing delegation, where he sat alongside Tim Cook, Jensen Huang, and Larry Fink for the parallel state visit. The absence at the closing of the largest civil trial in his life is the kind of detail Musk's legal team appears to have judged less damaging than the optics of skipping a Trump-led foreign trip."
"The case, as we have tracked since its opening in late April , turns on two claims: that OpenAI's 2025 recapitalisation, which converted the original nonprofit into a more conventional capped-profit structure with a $350 billion valuation reading at the latest round, breached the charitable trust under which Musk made his roughly $38 million in early donations between 2015 and 2017; and that Altman, Brockman, and Microsoft were unjustly enriched in the process. Microsoft is a co-defendant on an aiding-and-abetting theory."
Closing arguments in Musk v. Altman concluded in Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’s Oakland courtroom, with a nine-person jury sent home for the weekend and deliberations scheduled to begin Monday. Three weeks of testimony and depositions included Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Satya Nadella, and Elon Musk. The case narrowed to two competing interpretations: Musk’s side framed the conduct as stealing a charity, while the defense framed it as Musk not getting his way at OpenAI. Musk was absent from the closing, and his attorney apologized, citing Musk’s participation in Donald Trump’s Beijing state-visit delegation alongside Tim Cook, Jensen Huang, and Larry Fink. The claims center on alleged breach of charitable trust tied to OpenAI’s 2025 recapitalisation and alleged unjust enrichment of Altman, Brockman, and Microsoft.
Read at TNW | Openai
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