OpenAI Co-Founder Brockman Testifies About 2017 Musk Proposal for Greater Control and For-Profit Shift

Greg Brockman, president and co-founder of OpenAI, testified in a federal courthouse in Oakland, California, during the second week of a month-long trial in which Elon Musk is suing OpenAI, its chief executive Sam Altman and Brockman. Musk alleges that Brockman, OpenAI and Altman violated the founding agreement by turning the company into a for-profit entity and that Altman and Brockman unjustly enriched themselves.

He is seeking the removal of Altman and Brockman, the undoing of the for-profit restructuring and $134 billion to be distributed to OpenAI’s nonprofit.

OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit in 2015. It later added a for-profit arm to raise billions of dollars in funding. In 2025 the company decided to make the for-profit part the focus. Musk left OpenAI in 2018 after serving as a co-founder.

Brockman’s stake in OpenAI is today worth about $30 billion. Brockman kept a personal diary during the company’s founding years circa 2015 that contains about 100 pages of entries. He started the journal in school and continued using it to mull over big decisions.

” and “It’d be wrong to steal the non-profit from him. to convert to a b-corp without him. that’d be pretty morally bankrupt. ” In 2017 he wrote “we’ve been thinking that maybe we should just flip to a for-profit.

” Brockman testified that the diary entries are stream-of-consciousness writing that he never thought would be public. “It’s very painful. It’s very deeply personal writings that weren’t meant for the world to see but there’s nothing in there that I’m ashamed of,” he said.

In 2017 Musk proposed having more control over OpenAI. Brockman rejected the proposal.

“I actually thought he was going to hit me,” Brockman said. After the meeting Musk announced he would start withholding funding from OpenAI, which he had been backing since its start in 2015. Brockman testified that Musk was aware of plans to shift OpenAI to a for-profit business.

” Shivon Zilis, the mother of four of Musk’s children and a former OpenAI board member who left in March 2023, was also discussed. Brockman testified that Zilis told him her twins with Musk were via IVF and entirely platonic. Musk launched xAI in 2023.

In 2017 OpenAI’s AI won a video game competition in Seattle against the best human player. ” Musk hosted a celebration at a haunted mansion he had just bought in San Francisco after the video game win. Amber Heard was present at the haunted mansion celebration and served whisky.

At the haunted mansion meeting the group discussed making OpenAI a for-profit company. Musk told OpenAI leaders he deserved more equity because he started the most multibillion-dollar companies in history and provided the most money. Musk said: “Look, you guys are great, but I can start another AI company tomorrow.

” Musk said people needed to know he was in charge and that he knows rockets and electric cars but does not know AI. After Musk left the board in 2018 Brockman felt relief, some sadness, and that it was the end of an era but also freed them.