OpenAI co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever took the stand Monday in the Musk v. OpenAI trial, offering the first complete account of his push to oust Sam Altman. He said he spent about a year gathering evidence of what he called a "pattern of persistent lying" by Altman, including playing executives against each other. At the board's request, Sutskever wrote a memo — previously described in testimony as 52 pages long. He said he had "long discussions" with then-CTO Mira Murati about the possibility of removing Altman, and ultimately characterized the November 2023 coup as an "all-or-nothing gambit."
But Sutskever also defended OpenAI on the stand. He said the company never promised to operate as a nonprofit forever, and that shifting to a for-profit structure was a team consensus. When asked about the impact of computing power on AI research, he compared it to "the difference between an ant and a cat" — no money means no serious compute. He turned down a $6 million annual salary from Google to join OpenAI.
Sutskever also disclosed that his OpenAI equity is now worth about $7 billion (roughly $5 billion as of November 2025), making him one of the largest known individual shareholders. He confirmed for the first time that, during Altman's brief ouster, the remaining board members pursued a merger with rival Anthropic that would have handed over OpenAI's leadership — but Sutskever said he was "not excited" about the deal. Sutskever left OpenAI in 2024 to found Safe Superintelligence.
The trial is winding down. The judge said closing arguments will be Thursday, and Altman is expected to testify Tuesday.