All the evidence unveiled so far in Musk v. Altman

The Musk v. Altman trial is underway in a California federal court, with exhibits revealing internal dynamics from OpenAI's founding in 2015. Emails show Sam Altman proposed a five-part plan for an AI lab with a mission to 'create the first general AI and use it for individual empowerment,' suggesting a governance board including Musk, Bill Gates, Pierre Omidyar, and Dustin Moskovitz. Altman also outlined a structure where technology would be owned by a foundation and used 'for the good of the world,' with researchers having 'significant financial upside.' The lawsuit, which names Altman, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, and Microsoft as defendants, accuses them of breaching OpenAI's charitable trust, fraud, and unjust enrichment, centering on whether the company deviated from its founding mission of ensuring artificial general intelligence benefits humanity.

Other exhibits reveal early tensions: Brockman and Ilya Sutskever worried about Musk's level of control over the company, while Musk highlighted the importance of a nonprofit mission. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang provided OpenAI with an in-demand supercomputer, and Musk heavily influenced the company's early structure and mission. The trial also unearthed communications between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Musk, as well as entries from Brockman's diary. Former OpenAI employees are watching closely, as the outcome could affect how OpenAI runs its business and controls its technology, especially as both OpenAI and SpaceX reportedly race to go public this year.