Musk on Stand: I Was a Fool for Funding OpenAI

In a federal courtroom in Oakland, California, Elon Musk took the witness stand and declared himself "a fool"-specifically for funding OpenAI, the organization he co-founded in 2015 that is now a leading AI company valued in the hundreds of billions.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers presides over the trial, which centers on whether OpenAI betrayed its original nonprofit mission when it moved to a for-profit structure. The judge has repeatedly corrected Musk's courtroom behavior, and his testimony has been emotionally charged.

Co-founder Greg Brockman also faced intense questioning as litigators dissected OpenAI's transformation from a research nonprofit to a capped-profit entity backed by billions from Microsoft.

Court documents revealed that in 2017, Musk attempted to take control of OpenAI. When denied, he withdrew funding and later left the board in 2018. Evidence also shows Musk tried to recruit OpenAI researchers for his other ventures.

Musk now runs xAI, a direct competitor building its own large language models, while OpenAI competes with Google, Anthropic, and others in the race for artificial general intelligence.