Sam Altman testifies he was uncomfortable with Elon Musks demand for total control over OpenAI
Tech Sam Altman testifies he was uncomfortable with Elon Musks demand for total control over OpenAI Sam Altman took the stand in a federal courtroom and told a story that reads like a Silicon Valley succession drama. During discussions about restructuring OpenAI in 2017, Elon Musk didnt just want a seat at the table. He wanted to own the table, the chairs, and pass them down to his kids. Altman testified that Musk insisted on “total control” over a proposed for-profit subsidiary of OpenAI, going so far as to suggest that leadership of the entity should transfer to his children after his death. Altman said he found the demand uncomfortable, and more importantly, fundamentally at odds with how OpenAI was designed to operate. The founding principle that started the fight Here‘s the thing about OpenAI’s origin story: it was built around the idea that artificial general intelligence, the kind of AI that could match or exceed human-level reasoning, should never be controlled by a single person. That wasn‘t just a nice sentiment on a pitch deck. It was a foundational principle, one that Altman referenced directly as the reason he pushed back against Musk’s demands. Musk departed OpenAIs board in 2018, and the relationship between the








