Elon Musk gets combative on the stand during day two of jury trial against OpenAI

Artificial intelligenceElon Musk gets combative on the stand during Day 2 of jury trial against OpenAIMusk, who is suing OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over the company's for-profit restructuring, says he "chose to create this as a nonprofit for the public good" when he co-founded it.Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00Elon Musk arrives at federal court in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday.David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty ImagesShareAdd NBC News to GoogleApril 29, 2026, 4:09 PM EDTBy Shanshan Dong and Angela YangOAKLAND, Calif. — Elon Musk fired back at OpenAI’s lawyer in a tense cross-examination during the second day of the long-awaited trial that pits one tech billionaire against another.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.The Tesla and SpaceX owner filed a lawsuit against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, accusing him of betraying the public by enriching himself through the AI company they founded together in 2015 as a nonprofit. “They can’t have it both ways,” Musk said of OpenAI on Wednesday, during his second day on the stand. “They can’t have a nonprofit and free funding and the positive halo effect of being a nonprofit charity and also enrich themselves greatly.”OpenAI completed a tumultuous corporate restructuring in October, shifting its capped-profit model to a more traditional for-profit structure. This for-profit arm, which continues to be overseen by a nonprofit foundation, raised $122 billion in its latest funding round that closed last month.“I formed many tech companies. I could have done so with OpenAI. I chose not to, I chose to do something that would be a charity,” Musk said. “I deliberately chose to create this as a nonprofit for the public good.”When his cross-examination began, Musk pushed back against OpenAI’s lawyer Bill Savitt, who claimed that Musk was “never committed to OpenAI being a nonprofit.”“Your questions are not simple. They’re designed to trick me, esse...