Source: ABC7News

The second week of the federal civil trial in Oakland shifted focus to OpenAI President Greg Brockman, whose personal journal entries and testimony about OpenAI’s original nonprofit mission were central to proceedings. Brockman testified that his stake in OpenAI is now worth nearly $30 billion and confirmed a 2017 entry reading “Financially, what will take me to $1B?”, while describing such passages as expressions of frustration rather than a concrete plan. Musk’s attorneys, led by Marc Toberoff, pressed Brockman on motivation and alleged secret plans for enrichment, and OpenAI attorney William Savitt objected to some lines of questioning as irrelevant. Jurors heard Brockman acknowledge Elon Musk’s early involvement in recruiting talent and agreed that Musk’s presence lent credibility; a January 2018 email shown in court had Brockman calling it an “honor to work alongside him.”

Court testimony included UC Berkeley professor Stuart Russell as an expert on AI risks, with Russell disclosing a $5,000-per-hour fee totaling roughly $250,000 for his work on the case. A newly filed court document shows Musk and Brockman exchanged texts about a possible settlement two days before trial, and after talks allegedly collapsed Musk wrote that Brockman and Sam Altman would “be the most hated men in America,” but Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled those texts are not admissible. The lawsuit alleges OpenAI shifted from a donor-funded nonprofit into a structure that unjustly enriched executives, while OpenAI counters that Musk previously pushed for for-profit arrangements and is pursuing litigation to attack a competitor; the trial is ongoing and Brockman is expected back on the stand with further testimony from Sam Altman and others anticipated.