Emails and testimony add new detail to the OpenAI dispute
New evidence aired in federal court has added a sharper timeline to the long-running fight between Elon Musk and OpenAI. During proceedings in Musk v. Altman, lawyers presented emails, texts, and testimony indicating that, in the months before Musk left OpenAI’s board in February 2018, he tried to recruit Sam Altman to a Tesla-based artificial intelligence effort.
According to the material shown in court, Musk went beyond informal discussions. The evidence indicated he considered offering Altman a Tesla board seat as part of a plan to build what was described as a “world-class AI lab” inside Tesla. The disclosures surfaced during the cross-examination of Shivon Zilis, a former OpenAI adviser and board member who also held executive roles at Tesla and Neuralink.
The courtroom presentation matters because it goes to the heart of the case’s competing narratives. Musk’s side has argued that OpenAI’s leaders diverted a nonprofit mission into an enormously valuable private enterprise. OpenAI, by contrast, has argued that Musk’s own conduct showed a desire to gain control over the organization or redirect its work.
OpenAI uses the evidence to challenge Musk’s motives
OpenAI’s legal team used the day’s testimony to reinforce its claim that Musk was not merely a concerned early backer but a would-be power center who failed to secure the degree of influence he wanted. After court, OpenAI lawyer William Savitt said the documentary record showed Musk had contemplated placing Altman on Tesla’s board and tried to persuade him to join Tesla instead.
That argument fits OpenAI’s broader response to the lawsuit. The company has portrayed the case as, in part, a reaction to Musk’s inability to steer OpenAI in the direction he preferred. In that framing, later tensions were not just philosophical disagreements over governance or commercialization, but fallout from an earlier struggle over institutional control.
Wednesday’s evidence gave that theory more structure. One text from February 2018 presented in court showed Zilis asking Altman whether he had thought through “a B Corp subsidiary of Tesla.” While the full strategic intent behind the message was not established in the source material, it was introduced by OpenAI to suggest active consideration of a Tesla-linked path for AI development during a critical period for OpenAI’s future.
Zilis’ role drew particular attention
Zilis emerged as a central figure in this segment of the trial because of her dual position inside Musk’s orbit and around OpenAI. As described in court, one of her important functions was acting as a conduit between Musk and Altman. That made her communications especially relevant as lawyers sought to reconstruct what various parties were contemplating in late 2017 and early 2018.
The evidence also included a November 2017 email from Zilis to Tesla’s vice president of communications, Sarah O’Brien, sharing a draft FAQ for an event Tesla was planning at the NeurIPS AI conference. Even from the partial material available, the reference suggested that Tesla was already thinking in deliberate, public-facing terms about an AI research posture during the same period the OpenAI relationship was under strain.
OpenAI’s use of this material was tactical as well as substantive. By focusing on Zilis, its lawyers could connect internal communications, strategic planning, and Musk’s personal outreach into a single narrative. That is often more persuasive in court than isolated documents, because it gives a jury a coherent theory of motive and timing.
The case remains larger than one recruitment attempt
The Tesla recruitment evidence does not resolve the lawsuit on its own. Musk’s core claim, as described in court reporting, is that Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman effectively transformed a nonprofit venture that Musk helped fund into a private company now valued at more than $800 billion. OpenAI has rejected that view and has instead tried to show that Musk himself explored ways to redirect or subordinate the organization.
That leaves the trial centered on a larger question: whether this was a dispute over mission fidelity or a failed bid for influence. The newly aired communications strengthen OpenAI’s effort to argue the latter, at least in the eyes of the jury.
They also illustrate how blurred the institutional boundaries around advanced AI were at the time. In the late 2010s, top figures in the sector moved through overlapping networks of research labs, boardrooms, conferences, and startup alliances. The evidence presented this week suggests that Tesla was not merely watching those developments from the sidelines.
Why the courtroom details matter beyond the lawsuit
The significance of the testimony extends beyond legal strategy. It offers a window into how consequential the race for AI leadership already seemed in 2017 and 2018. If Musk was attempting to bring Altman into Tesla and considering a dedicated Tesla AI lab, it shows that the competition to attract top AI leadership and shape institutional control was already intense well before the current generative AI boom.
For the public, the documents also sharpen a point that is often lost in broad narratives about AI ethics and corporate structure: control has always been part of the story. Governance debates are not abstract when the organizations involved could shape major platforms, industries, and national strategies.
As the trial continues, the question is not simply what happened inside OpenAI, but what the episode reveals about the early contest to dominate advanced AI development. Wednesday’s evidence suggests that contest was already fierce, personal, and closely tied to the ambitions of the industry’s most powerful figures.
This article is based on reporting by Wired. Read the original article.
Originally published on wired.com
