What Did We Learn from the Elon Musk-Sam Altman Trial?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now, it’s been a big week for big tech. Fresh off CEO Sam Altman’s legal victory against Elon Musk, news comes that OpenAI reportedly is planning to go public very soon, as is Musk’s SpaceX. Mike Isaac is a reporter for the New York Times, and he shares analysis of the recent court battle with Musk with Hari Sreenivasan.

HARI  SREENIVASAN: Christiane, thanks. Mike Isaac, thanks so much for joining us again. Listen, you have covered tech for a long time. You’ve covered the rise of AI here. We’ve got this verdict from a jury within a couple of hours on Monday, rejecting Elon Musk’s $150 billion lawsuit against Sam Altman. You know, for people who aren’t in tech, why did this trial matter?

MIKE ISAAC: It’s funny, a lot of journalists and folks in the media were basically saying, what did we learn here afterwards? And we did kind of go back to the status quo, but I think it was one of these moments as AI is developing pretty rapidly, that you know, because of two billionaires essentially entangled in a legal battle, we’re asking who should be the steward of developing this next generation intelligence? You know, and a lot of this trial was Elon Musk levying this lawsuit saying, you know, Sam Altman is not doing this for the right reasons. We started this as an altruistic endeavor to build safe AI. And now as the company has, you know, dollar signs in their eyes, they want to build it as a profitable endeavor. And Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, is saying Elon Musk is just building his own for-profit competitor, and he doesn’t actually care about this either. 

So, but I really think it was one of these things where it reminds us that, oh, every, really, every big tech CEO in the Valley right now is trying to build advanced artificial intelligence. And we kind of have to wonder who should – if this stuff works – who should be the steward of that? And who has like, the proper intentions in place? And I’m not sure if we got an answer or a correct answer out of this trial. but at least it was a reminder, if that makes sense.

SREENIVASAN: You know, I guess some of that would make sense, but this seems like this was a frozen in time moment because from the emails and the discovery, this is how they used to be in 2013, 2015. I mean, they really liked each other. They were very happy to get Elon Musk’s backing. Right? And then here they are today, and they’re unrecognizable, they’re sparring on every platform imaginable. They’re calling each other names.

ISAAC: It’s, I mean, that was the real trip of going back and reading all these emails. Like you said, it was 10 years of discovery. I remember some of the earliest ones in 2015, this was back – you have to remember also – this was when Elon Musk’s celebrity was really high in a positive way. Right? This was, he was the rocket man and literally basing, you know, Iron Man, the character off of him. People in general liked him. And Sam Altman was relatively unknown as a character, as a startup incubator guy. But all of the emails they were trading were basically, you know, I’m privileged to work with you. I’m glad we’re gonna build AI for the better. And also at a time where no one in the mainstream really cared about this stuff. You know, it was still an unproven, relatively untested technology far from the chatbots that, you know, millions of people are interacting with today. So I do think it was like a time capsule into a time where this was just like kind of a far-flung pursuit. And for Elon Musk at least an expensive and, you know, endeavor that he didn’t really expect to see any return on.

SREENIVASAN: Yeah. So where did that relationship go wrong? I mean, it seems like now it’s just this grudge match that’s playing out in courts and spending millions of dollars in legal fees and wasting jurors’ time.

ISAAC: Yeah, wasting jurors’ time is a pretty good point. It was a month of taxpayer expenses. But, so around 2017 or 2018 Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, who was another co-founder, and the president of the company now, started talking and saying, look, there’s been some advancements in AI technology. This is actually gonna cost us a lot more than we thought to train what are called AI models, which are, you know, the sort of gear under the hood that powers these chatbots. And we thought it could be maybe millions or tens of millions, and perhaps it’s gonna go into the billions, even, because of just how resource intensive these computers and what are called GPUs required to train these models. 

And so all of a sudden a nonprofit doesn’t make as much sense to them according to their version of this. Elon Musk says, Hey, hey, hey, what, you know, what are you doing? We got into this to like not build what he called “the Terminator future.” We don’t wanna make a profit off of this. We want this to be a nonprofit. These guys start – Greg Brockman and Sam Altman start talking to Microsoft to take on more investment. And this is really the genesis of the diversions between them because of how this, you know, non-profit should look, whether it’s a for-profit company or not. And I think that’s when things start getting really, you know, from gnarly to outright acrimonious in just a couple of years.

SREENIVASAN: So Elon at the time says, okay, I’m gonna run it, or it’s gonna be in my possession or control. And the OpenAI folks are like, no, we’ll pass. I mean, and then Elon builds his own basically competitor, but a for-profit?

ISAAC: Yeah. There was this other interesting moment during the trial where – as you might imagine, Elon likes to be in control of things. He has a lot of his own companies: Tesla, SpaceX, it was PayPal at one point, the Boring Company. He has a bunch of different things going on. Now Twitter, which is called X. And his, as this was getting, you know, rougher between them, he was saying, we should incubate OpenAI inside of Tesla. That was another thing that came out in the trial, which people didn’t know about. That’s when they sort of split and said, no, we’re gonna do our own thing. And exactly what you said a few years later, Elon decides, you know, I’ve got SpaceX going on. I have Tesla, which has self-driving technology, which also relies on AI. I should just be building this myself. And ultimately he buys Twitter, turns it into X, and -then sort of attaches XAI, which is his AI wing of the company. And also something that is supposed to be a for-profit company.

SREENIVASAN: Okay. So Musk took to X  to point out to everybody and said, look, “The judge and jury never actually ruled on the merits of the case, just on a calendar technicality. There’s no question to anyone following the case” – this is Musk’s opinion – “in detail that Altman and Brockman did in fact enrich themselves by stealing a charity. The only question is when they did it. I will be filing an appeal with the Ninth Circuit because creating a precedent to loot charities is incredibly destructive to charitable giving in America. Open AI was founded to benefit all of humanity.” Now, could they win that appeal?

ISAAC: I mean, yes, technically they could. There’s a few things he did right after the trial of course, immediately took to his social network and started giving his opinion. He also did a post calling the judge, an activist judge, and like really, you know, railing against her. And then I think his lawyers advised him to take it down because he deleted that tweet within the day. And it’s probably a smart idea. And we actually got outreach from his side saying, hey, can you note that he deleted the tweet? But I do think that – I know, exactly it was not smart from him. But I think that, I wanna say, like, his point about it being a technicality is a little too strong because look, one of the big key points of the case was statute of limitations.

And he left in 2018, he didn’t file this suit until 2024, and there’s a three year span of time in which you can file these suits, and he didn’t do it there. So, like, that’s law rather than just sort of a minor detail. That said, we didn’t get to hear the jury rule on the merits of whether the other two counts of unjust enrichment and things that Elon Musk did also charge. And so, you know, I think it’s fair to say, is there a way to hear whether he would win those or not? But I don’t think that’s really honestly the point at this point. I think it actually benefits for him to keep this tied up in court as long as possible. 

SREENIVASAN: So right before the trial, Elon Musk sent out this text to Greg Brockman, the co-founder of OpenAI with Sam Altman. And he said, I’m gonna make sure you and Sam Altman are the most hated men on Earth. So if the goal is to just reputationally damage Sam Altman and OpenAI before this company goes public, is that a win for Elon?

ISAAC: That’s a, I mean, it’s a great point. And that was pretty unequivocal in how he put it. I believe that was in a direct message on X because so much of what these guys do is on social media a lot of the time. Pretty funny. But yeah, that’s, I think, the greater goal in a lot of this, and really the outcome of the trial, was just like dragging Altman and OpenAI through the mud. And I remember specifically Sam Altman’s testimony just came out with this brutal series of character attacks and asking, can you trust this per– can you trust Sam Altman? Can you trust this company? And entering that into the record, I think for – at a time in particular when I think a lot of people, everyday people don’t necessarily think AI is gonna be positive for them or their jobs or their wellbeing. That’s damaging, you know, it’s damaging to this company. And I think in a way, Elon Musk did kind of win in that regard.

SREENIVASAN: You know, we’ve seen this incredible public opinion shift from “Holy cow this is an amazing tool or technology, I can’t believe this computer can do this – right – or software.” To, “wait, these guys have been bragging about how it’s going to take away all our jobs and potentially kill us all.” And oh, by the way, you’re using all this power and water. I don’t really want this in my neighborhood. Right? I mean, it’s so quick that shift has happened, and I wonder, does anybody win here? 

ISAAC: I completely agree, and I think that it’s interesting. I think all of the CEOs right now, certainly at OpenAI, have report – we’ve reported on internal discussions there. They bought a media company to try to change that narrative basically. At Anthropic, which is another startup that competes with these companies, but also has quickly grown. And they are probably the loudest voices on how profoundly potentially damaging or at least reshaping of society that AI could be. And then we have Google, which just had their big developer event called Google IO this week trying to figure out how to bring this as a positive message to the world. But I think all of these companies have figured out like, okay, we’ve been warning the alarm bells for too long at this point, and we need to shift the narrative of, okay, these are tools that can actually help you. These can have economic benefits rather than put you out of work. Meanwhile, the biggest software companies in the world are cutting 10 to 20% of their ranks because they feel like they can replace those workers with AI. So it’s a real mixed message. And to your point, trying to make this stuff sound good while at the same time showing, you know, hair raising emails from the past and CEOs screaming at each other online at least, is a real – it’s a very big contrast, is what I’d say.

SREENIVASAN: Does any of this affect OpenAI – which is planning to go public – Spacex – which is one of Elon’s companies that owns Xai – that’s gonna go public? Do I think about that and say, should I be putting my money behind these companies that are primarily these big figureheads?

ISAAC: I think that’s another huge point of, you know, this trial and dragging, certainly Sam, through the muck, but like both sides. And you’re exactly right in the sense that like 2026, every – not every, many of the big AI companies are trying to get out the door and go public. And that’s because they know there’s a lot of investor and retail sentiment to get exposure to AI companies, which are basically propping up significant parts of the economy right now. The huge investments in infrastructure. And so there’s kind of a race between SpaceX, as you said, which is like this weird nesting doll of all of Elon’s companies, OpenAI, as well as Anthropic, which also wants to go public this year. But I think that was one of the most damaging parts for OpenAI in this trial. One of the other things they recalled was how Altman was briefly fired by his own board of directors and had executives at the top of the company writing emails to each other saying, I can’t trust this guy. And so you have whether people believe that or not, you have these, these figureheads who, you know, retail investors might be like, all right, do I trust this, this guy who has been painted as basically the biggest liar in Silicon Valley with my money? Or do I wanna wait for Anthropic or go with Elon Musk?

SREENIVASAN: You know, we think of Silicon Valley as this place where everything’s kind of happening in some garage and, you know, maybe it’s a sort of nostalgia to Apple and Hewlett Packard and these, these companies that become huge. Now, if you wanted to start an AI company, it’s huge amounts of money that are needed for this. I mean, how different is that from the culture that you’ve covered in the Valley for decades now?

ISAAC: It’s funny, I was talking to my editor about this the other day and she was saying, you know, she’s been around longer than I have. We’ve both been around for a while. And even she was saying like, look, this feels different than ever before. The sums that we’re talking about, of money, that just the pure computing cost – energy as far as how much time and power and what’s called compute it takes to train these AI models – is an order of magnitude more than ever before. And that’s why these companies are moving from, you know, venture capital investors to courting, literally courting global governments and their arms, because that type of money and that type of scale is what is required to build these systems. And so we need to stop thinking the billions and start thinking in the trillions is essentially what they’re saying, which is crazy. And that’s, it’s also why the implications are so big, because as we were saying before, this is where the global economy comes into play. And a swing in any of these companies can affect us all.

SREENIVASAN: So it’s really in that larger context that even something as small as this trial, which seems like, oh, this is kind of a petty beef between these two billionaires to, oh, this could have kind of knock on effects on how these companies go public, whether investors trust this, as you point out, how much of the US economy is currently propped up by what these companies are spending and planning to spend.

ISAAC: Yeah. And like I think about that, not to, you know, scaremonger, but I think about that in terms of 401ks. I think about that in terms of index funds, you know? Right? Like the – and for a while now, the tech sector has been one of the largest growth factors in, you know, the S&P 500 and, and things that have kept the American economy very strong. But that is also the other way to look at it is like, it’s a huge risk factor in terms of, okay, if this doesn’t work out, if the type of AI they claim to be building is not as, you know, revolutionary as they might say, then what does that look like? What does that mean for my retirement? Things like that. Or if, if there are volatile CEOs running this stuff who, maybe, whose judgment we don’t trust. Do I feel comfortable? And I don’t know, I think, not to get too alarmist, but I think it’s worth like thinking about in terms of the companies that we look to and the governance at the top of them.

SREENIVASAN: Mike Isaac of the New York Times, thanks so much for your time.

ISAAC: Thanks Hari. Thanks for having me here.