Elon Musk’s appetite for control runs deep. So deep, apparently, that when Sam Altman asked him what would happen to OpenAI if he died, Musk casually suggested it might pass to his children. That’s the kind of detail that sticks with people, and Altman made sure everyone knew it counts as “hair-raising” during his federal jury testimony in Oakland, California this week.
The business dispute between Musk and the OpenAI co-founder has become a window into how the billionaire operates when he wants something badly. And in the mid-2010s, he wanted OpenAI. Not just a seat at the table. Control. The whole thing.
The Consolidation Strategy
Musk didn’t approach the problem with subtlety. According to Altman’s testimony, the billionaire floated multiple paths to gaining dominance. More board seats. The CEO role. Converting OpenAI into a Tesla subsidiary. Each option served the same underlying goal: putting Musk in charge when the company restructured from a nonprofit into a for-profit entity.
The rationale, at least as Altman recounted it, was straightforward. Musk believed his celebrity and business reputation could unlock funding faster. “If I make one tweet about this, it’s instantly worth a ton,” Altman recalled him saying. It’s the kind of confidence that only comes from watching your own name move markets.
But there was a fundamental problem with Musk’s vision, at least from Altman’s perspective. The whole reason OpenAI existed in the first place was because Altman, Greg Brockman, and Ilya Sutskever believed that no single person should control artificial general intelligence, or AGI. Handing that control to Musk in exchange for easier financing felt like betraying the mission before the real work had even begun.
“I was extremely uncomfortable with it,” Altman said on the stand.
When the Deal Fell Apart
Musk left OpenAI in early 2018 and stopped his quarterly $5 million donations. The parting wasn’t graceful. In an email that Altman described as burned into his memory, Musk declared that OpenAI had “a zero percent chance, not a one percent chance, of success” without him. It’s the kind of thing someone says when they’re convinced they’re indispensable and furious to discover they might not be.
When OpenAI eventually formed its for-profit subsidiary in 2019, Altman offered Musk another chance to invest. He declined. His reason, according to Altman: he no longer invested in startups he didn’t control. That’s a revealing statement about how Musk approaches technology ventures. For him, it’s not enough to be involved. He needs dominion.
The Lawsuit and What It Reveals
Now Musk is suing Altman, accusing him of having “looted a charity” by steering OpenAI toward for-profit status. The irony is thick. Musk wanted exactly that restructuring, just with himself holding the keys. The lawsuit looks less like principled objection to OpenAI’s evolution and more like a grudge wrapped in legal paperwork.
What emerges from Altman’s testimony is a portrait of competing visions colliding. Musk saw an opportunity to control a transformative tech company. Altman and his cofounders saw a cautionary tale in letting any one person, no matter how accomplished, hold that kind of power. That disagreement shaped what OpenAI became and explains why Musk walked away when he couldn’t call the shots.
The question now isn’t really whether Musk was right to leave. It’s whether there’s anything more dangerous than a brilliant person convinced they’re the only one who can save the world.
