Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI, which was whittled down to just two counts before trial, entered its cross-examination phase on Wednesday. OpenAI attorney Savitt used Musk's own emails and texts to paint a damning timeline.
It started in spring 2017, when Musk — then OpenAI's primary funder — stopped the quarterly $2 million payments. In August, his family office head Birchall emailed asking whether to keep withholding. Musk's reply: "Yes." Then in September, as the group discussed creating a for-profit entity, Musk demanded four board seats (the other founders combined would have three). "I will unquestionably have initial control of the company," he wrote. Co-founder and then-chief scientist Ilya Sutskever pushed back, saying that gave Musk too much power.
After losing that power struggle in October, Musk — still on OpenAI's board — started poaching. He emailed a Tesla VP, saying he'd convinced early researcher Andrej Karpathy to join Tesla: "The OpenAI people will want to kill me, but it has to be done." That same month, he told a Neuralink co-founder to poach directly: "Just hire them. I'm fine with it."
Then in February 2018, Musk texted then-OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis — now a Neuralink executive and mother of four of Musk's children — about actively poaching three or four people for Tesla. Zilis asked whether she should stay on OpenAI's board "to be friendly" so that "information can keep flowing." Musk said yes. Savitt used that exchange to argue Musk continued getting inside info through Zilis after leaving OpenAI.
Musk repeatedly complained that Savitt's questions were "designed to trick me." Judge Gonzalez Rogers had to tell both sides to cool down at one point. When Savitt pressed Musk on promising to donate $1 billion but only giving $38 million, Musk replied: "I contributed my reputation. Those things have value." Earlier that day, Savitt also impeached Musk with his own tweet from March: Musk testified that Tesla isn't working on AGI, then Savitt showed Musk's tweet: "Tesla will be one of the companies to make AGI."
Musk returns for more questioning on Thursday. Birchall and OpenAI president Greg Brockman are expected to testify afterward.