OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman testified in Oakland federal court this week that a 2017 meeting with Elon Musk turned so volatile he feared a physical altercation. Brockman, a defendant in Musk’s lawsuit seeking to undo OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit company, told the jury that when he rejected Musk’s bid for greater control over the organization, Musk’s demeanor shifted sharply. “I actually thought he was going to hit me,” Brockman said. The meeting ended with Musk announcing he would begin withholding funding from OpenAI, which he had been backing since its founding in 2015.
Brockman’s testimony is part of the second week of a month-long trial in Oakland between Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, centered on Musk’s claims that the company abandoned its founding mission as a nonprofit dedicated to the safe development of artificial intelligence. Brockman described Musk’s earlier efforts to consolidate control over OpenAI, including what he characterized as attempts to court him and co-founder Ilya Sutskever. Lawyers for OpenAI showed the jury text messages from August 2017 between Sutskever and Brockman referencing whether the offer of a Tesla Model 3 would make Brockman willing to accept unfavorable terms.
A central thread of Brockman’s testimony has been his assertion that Musk was aware of and engaged in discussions about OpenAI’s eventual shift toward a for-profit structure, undermining Musk’s claim that the transition was a betrayal of the organization’s founding commitments.
Brockman also addressed the role of former OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis, who is expected to testify next and is the mother of four of Musk’s children. Brockman said Zilis informed him she had had twins but that he only learned Musk was the father through public reports. When he later spoke with Zilis about it, he said she told him the conception was via IVF and entirely platonic. Asked why Zilis remained on the OpenAI board for years after Musk’s departure, Brockman said: “We trusted her to keep the Elon conflict under control.” Zilis left the board in March 2023, around the time Musk launched xAI, the company behind ChatGPT competitor Grok.
