In the second week of a high-profile jury trial that could have profound impact on the race for artificial intelligence, OpenAI president Greg Brockman rejected allegations that he and other co-founders betrayed the company's philanthropic mission and illegally enriched themselves by flipping the non-profit lab into a for-profit corporation.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk in 2024 sued Brockman and CEO Sam Altman, alleging they bilked him of $38 million in donations then restructured as a for-profit corporation by exclusively licensing their flagship product to Microsoft—betraying a founding mission to operate as an open-source charity that would counter the risks of profit-driven AI.

OpenAI and Microsoft deny the allegations, arguing that Musk abandoned the company in 2018 to start his own for-profit competitor, xAI, when other founders rejected his bid to take full control of the operation.

"I think we've been very consistent on the mission," Brockman told a federal court in Oakland.

"If you look at what we've accomplished—currently the foundation has $150 billion worth of OpenAI equity value. That's something we've built through hard blood, sweat, and tears through all this time since Elon left."

The company's nonprofit foundation has a 27 percent stake in OpenAI's for-profit corporation; Microsoft, which has invested more than $13 billion since 2019, owns 26 percent.

Called as an adverse witness for the plaintiff, Brockman over two days May 4–5 offered testimony outlining an alternate narrative and timeframe than the one Musk presented the week prior.

Brockman also attempted to add context to what he has claimed were "cherrypicked" segments of his personal diary, unsealed during the discovery process.

He often spoke in incomplete sentences, punctuated by stock phrases like, "We were solving for the mission."

Arguably, this had less zing to it than, "You can't just steal a charity"—a phrase Musk favored in his own testimony.

'Morally Bankrupt'

Musk's attorney Steven Molo grilled Brockman on a series of diary entries from 2017 and 2018, a time of intense negotiations with Musk over the future structure of the company.

In one from 2017, Brockman muses, "It'd be wrong to steal the nonprofit from [Musk] and turn it into a B-Corp without him—doing so would be pretty morally bankrupt."

Brockman denied this contradicted his commitment to OpenAI's mission. "I think I meant it would actually serve the mission, but it would be hard to look at yourself in the mirror," he told the court.

Under cross-examination, he explained he was referring to the idea of voting Musk off the board of directors, which he had considered at the time.