Elon Musk faced sharp questioning from OpenAI’s lawyers on the third day of the Musk v. Altman trial on Wednesday, April 29, 2026, as cross-examination revealed emails showing he withheld promised funding and recruited OpenAI researchers while still serving on its board.
At the center of the courtroom confrontation was a 2017 power struggle in which Musk sought majority control of OpenAI’s emerging for-profit arm. Emails presented as evidence showed Musk demanding the right to appoint four of its board members — giving him more voting power than all other cofounders combined. Researcher Ilya Sutskever rejected the proposal, writing that it would give Musk too much power. Musk ultimately lost the internal battle.
Separately, emails showed that Musk had halted quarterly $5 million payments to OpenAI in spring 2017, pausing a broader $1 billion pledge he made at the organization’s founding. In August 2017, Musk’s family office head Jared Birchall asked whether to continue withholding the funds. Musk replied with a single word: “Yes.”
OpenAI lawyer William Savitt also pressed Musk on his recruitment of OpenAI staff. A June 2017 email to a Tesla vice president confirmed Musk had hired researcher Andrej Karpathy as director of Tesla Vision. “The OpenAI guys are gonna want to kill me, but it had to be done,” Musk wrote at the time. A separate October 2017 email to Neuralink cofounder Ben Rapoport read: “Hire independently or directly from OpenAI. I have no problem if you pitch people at OpenAI to work at Neuralink.” Musk was still an OpenAI board member when both messages were sent.
On the stand, Musk defended his actions, arguing that Karpathy had already decided to leave and that restricting employees from joining other companies would itself be illegal. He repeatedly told Savitt his questions were misleading and said he could not recall key details of OpenAI’s history. The cross-examination was also disrupted by objections and technical issues.
The trial, presided over by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, centers on Musk’s legal claims against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman. The emails entered into evidence may complicate Musk’s position by suggesting he used financial leverage and talent recruitment as tools during a period when he held a fiduciary role at the organization.
Source: Business Latest