OpenAI co-founder says he feared Musk would ‘physically attack’ him

Artificial intelligenceOpenAI co-founder says he feared Musk would ‘physically attack’ himOpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman said he had a tense confrontation with Elon Musk after there was a disagreement about potential equity shares in OpenAI.Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00Elon Musk arrives to court at the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building on April 30 in Oakland, Calif.Benjamin Fanjoy / Getty ImagesShareAdd NBC News to GoogleMay 5, 2026, 6:57 PM EDTBy David IngramOAKLAND, Calif. — The internal debate at tech startup OpenAI got so heated back in 2017 that one of its co-founders, Greg Brockman, feared that co-founder Elon Musk would hit him, Brockman testified Tuesday in a trial that will determine the future of the organization behind ChatGPT.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.“I truly thought he was going to physically attack me,” Brockman said during the fifth day of the trial.Brockman said the tense encounter happened in August that year, shortly after the OpenAI co-founders decided they needed far more money to develop artificial intelligence than they thought they’d be able to raise as a charity. He testified that they were batting around ideas, including the creation of a for-profit arm.“The meeting started out very pleasant,” Brockman testified. Musk was there and had just given Tesla vehicles as gifts to his fellow OpenAI co-founders, Brockman said. Musk is the longtime CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and, years later, would found his own AI startup, xAI, which competes with OpenAI. Ilya Sutskever, another of the co-founders, reciprocated at the meeting by giving Musk a Tesla-related painting as a gift.But Brockman testified that the tone of the meeting changed when the topic of equity shares in the proposed for-profit OpenAI arm came up. He said that Musk wanted majority control of the organization and rejected a proposal that all the co-founders get equal shares.“He said, ‘I decli...