Overview
- Elon Musk and Sam Altman appeared in federal court in Oakland on Tuesday as opening statements and Musk’s testimony began in a case over whether OpenAI abandoned its original mission.
- Musk framed the dispute as an existential safety fight and seeks to remove Altman and Greg Brockman while directing any award to OpenAI’s nonprofit arm rather than taking personal damages.
- OpenAI rejects the claims as unfounded and motivated by rivalry, and Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers warned both sides to limit social media posts as the advisory jury hears evidence and the judge prepares to rule by late May.
- A Wall Street Journal report said OpenAI fell short of internal revenue and weekly user goals, and cited CFO Sarah Friar’s warning that slow growth could strain payments for long-term computing contracts, which OpenAI called “ridiculous.”
- Following the report, chip and infrastructure stocks fell, with Oracle down about 4% and declines across Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD, and SoftBank, adding pressure as OpenAI weighs an eventual IPO and large data center spending.