Musk v Altman: Much ado about nothing

Summary

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Podcast Summary: “Musk v Altman: Much ado about nothing”

Decoder with Nilay Patel (The Verge) – May 21, 2026
Guests: Nilay Patel (Host), Liz Lopato (Senior Chaos Reporter, The Verge)

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the high-drama legal battle of Musk v. Altman, from the courthouse chaos to the personal vendettas underlying the lawsuit. Verge’s Liz Lopato, who provided live coverage for the past month, joins Nilay Patel to unpack the lawsuit’s substance, the colorful cast of characters involved, and the effect on reputations within the AI industry. The trial, centering on whether OpenAI’s conversion to a for-profit entity wronged Elon Musk, ultimately fizzled as the jury found Musk’s filing was too late. But as Nilay and Liz highlight, the real story is about grudge matches, shattered alliances, and a tech sector anxiously searching for grown-ups in the room.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What the Case Was Really About

• Ostensible vs. Actual Motives:

  • Ostensibly about Elon Musk’s claim OpenAI violated a “charitable trust” by morphing from a nonprofit to a for-profit entity, potentially costing him money.
  • In reality, “punishing Sam Altman and maybe trying to kneecap OpenAI” was the main intent.
  • The trial served as “the two worst people you know are fighting” ([02:50] Liz Lopato).

• Courtroom & Vibes:

  • The courthouse was “a zoo,” with protests day and night, and courtroom antics including rule violations and dramatic lawyer statements ([02:50–05:03]).

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2. Reputational Fallout & Industry Dynamics

• No Floor for Reputations:

  • Both Musk and Altman’s reputations already so low, “I kind of think there’s no floor about these things” ([05:44] Liz Lopato).
  • Even Mira Murati, once seen as incorruptible, was revealed as ambivalent and politically adroit.

• “Waiting to See Which Way the Wind Would Blow” ([07:36]):

  • Quote from Helen Toner: “Mira was waiting to see which way the wind would blow and didn’t realize she was the wind.”

• No Clear Heroes:

  • Everyone—Altman, board members, even staff—“totally untrustworthy” ([05:44–09:16]).
  • Industry leaders form a small, emotionally entangled circle lacking key management maturity.

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3. Microsoft’s Role: The “Adult in the Room”

• Satya Nadella’s Detachment:

  • Microsoft, as an OpenAI investor, projected stability: “the only adult in the room at any given time was somebody from Microsoft” ([10:28–11:57]).

• Notable Microsoft Moment:

  • Their opening statement: “We’re not sure why we’re here, but you know us, we’re Microsoft. You’ve used Windows, surely. Do you like Xbox? That’s us.” ([10:30])

• Satya’s Strategy:

  • “Don’t text me. Don’t leave a paper trail.” ([11:20])

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4. Legal Outcome: Technicalities Over Substance

• Jury Ruling ([13:29–18:39]):

  • Verdict: Musk’s case failed on statute of limitations—he filed too late.
  • Even without the timing issue, “he still would have lost. This was a pretty weak case.” ([13:29] Liz Lopato)
  • No evidence that Musk’s donations to OpenAI came with enforceable strings.
  • “Not even the mother of his children can corroborate his account.” ([16:23] quoting OpenAI’s lawyer re: Siobhan Zilis)

• Why Argue Substance?

  • Whether Musk knew of the for-profit conversion before “the blip” (Altman’s brief ouster) was a factual question for the jury.
  • The trial’s deep dive into substance let all the dirty laundry air, likely Musk’s intent ([18:07–19:02]).

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5. Litigation as a Weapon

• Endless Legal Pressure:

  • Musk aims to “tie OpenAI up in litigation for as long as he possibly can…bleeding them for cash. Which is a strategy that we’ve seen other billionaires use.” ([20:21] Liz Lopato)
  • Directly compared to Sheldon Adelson’s approach.

• Personal Grudge:

  • “Is he personally pissed off at Sam Altman, or is he just affronted that OpenAI succeeded without him?” ([21:22])

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6. Zero-Sum AI Drama: Winners, Losers, and Industry Implications

• Musk’s Motives: Strategic or Vindictive?

  • “Killing a competitor is not necessarily not a competitive advantage.” ([23:15] Liz Lopato)
  • Musk weakening OpenAI could benefit rivals and, indirectly, himself.

• Industry as a Small, Enmeshed Circle:

  • “Every company in the AI space is one degree of Kevin Bacon away from OpenAI.” ([24:30] Liz Lopato)

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7. Did Anyone Actually Get Hurt?

• Reputations Priced In:

  • “The person who got hurt the most here is Mira Moradi, who did not have her reputation trashed before this.” ([24:58])

• No Material Impact:

  • Ongoing appeals won’t change much for OpenAI. The industry already accepted Altman and Musk’s character issues.

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8. AI Industry’s Maturity & Future

• A Surprising Lack of Grown-Ups:

  • “My big question…is, boy, this handful of people that have been entrusted with spending all this money…they seem so immature. And…maybe you should let the Microsofts and the Googles of the world be in charge…” ([27:02] Nilay Patel)
  • Liz: Microsoft’s bureaucracy may be preferable to tech founders’ arrested development ([27:59]).

• Childhood Fantasies vs. Adult Decisions:

  • “Ever since I was a child, I’ve dreamed of AI…” mocked for blurring fiction and reality ([28:09] Liz Lopato).

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9. Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Reputations:

  “This is like a case where it’s like the two worst people you know are fighting. So it’s kind of hard to root for anyone.”
  — Liz Lopato ([02:50])

• On Industry Complicity:

  “The entire AI industry at the top is like 10 people who are wrapped up in each other emotionally, professionally. They’re writing each other obsequious emails…”
  — Nilay Patel ([09:16])

• On Microsoft’s Role:

  “We’re not sure why we’re here, but you know us, we’re Microsoft. You’ve used Windows, surely. Do you like Xbox? That’s us.”
  — Liz Lopato ([10:30])

• On Musk’s Lawsuit:

  “Not even the mother of his children can corroborate his account.”
  — OpenAI’s lawyer, per Liz Lopato ([16:23])

• On Ongoing Litigation:

  “He does intend to tie OpenAI up in litigation for as long as he possibly can. You know, bleeding them for cash.”
  — Liz Lopato ([20:21])

• On AI Industry Leaders:

  “A handful of people… spending all this money… they seem so immature.”
  — Nilay Patel ([27:02])

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10. Final Thoughts & Easter Eggs

• Anthropic’s Rise:

  • A main beneficiary of the drama was arguably Anthropic, staffed by OpenAI alumni.
  • Breaking news live on-air: “Andres Karpathy has joined Anthropic” is met with laughter and anecdotes about Musk recruiting OpenAI engineers for Tesla ([29:00]).

• “Jackass Trophy” Episode:

  • An “evidence dispute about whether or not the jury could be shown a jackass trophy… the back half of a donkey, saying ‘never stop being a jackass’ for AI safety.” Dario Amodei (now Anthropic) helped present it ([31:54]).

• On OpenAI’s Technical Edge:

  • Musk’s own AI company, xAI, “starting over from scratch… leasing out their data center capacity… nothing… even with cheating by distilling everybody’s models.” ([25:45] Liz Lopato)

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Key Timestamps

• [02:50] — What the case was officially and actually about; court chaos and protests.
• [05:44] — Court of public opinion: the reputational “floor.”
• [07:36] — Mira Murati’s revealed role (“she was the wind”).
• [10:30] — Microsoft’s comic detachment as a party to the trial.
• [13:29] — Legal deep dive: statute of limitations and verdict.
• [16:23] — Devastating courtroom quote re: Musk’s “strings attached.”
• [18:07] — Why the trial focused so much on substance.
• [20:21] — Musk’s ongoing crusade and litigation as a billionaire weapon.
• [23:15] — The point of killing OpenAI (“competitive advantage?”).
• [27:02] — The immaturity of the tech elite.
• [29:00] — Breaking news: Karpathy joins Anthropic; recruiting shenanigans.
• [31:54] — The “jackass trophy” and Anthropic’s founding characters.

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Conclusion

The Musk v. Altman trial was less about legalities and more a public unmasking of Silicon Valley’s egos, infighting, and unresolved ambitions. With the actual case dead on arrival due to timing, the month-long drama aired the pettiest internal squabbles in AI, exposing a core circle that’s driven more by personal vendettas and childhood futureshock than clear-eyed leadership. While OpenAI’s fundamentals remain largely unchanged, the trial’s real legacy is a more jaundiced public view of its leaders—and perhaps one more opening for Microsoft, Anthropic, and the next would-be grownups in artificial intelligence.

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Transcript

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[Neelai Patel]

Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neelai Patel, editor in Chief of the Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today I'm talking with Liz Lopata, who spent the last month covering the Musk v. Altman trial in all of its chaos. You'll hear her describe the courthouse as a zoo and explain that there are protests of one kind or another happening outside every single day. Both Elon Musk and Sam Altman are big personalities and people have lots of feelings about both of them in the AI industry. And somehow after all of this, nothing really happened. The jury found that Elon had filed his lawsuit after the statute of limitations had run out. You'll hear Liz explain exactly why the jury had to find that and what else is going on here beyond the technicalities of the statute of limitations? This trial was nominally about OpenAI's conversion to a for profit entity from a non profit one, and if the way OpenAI went about that conversion cost Elon Musk money. But I think we all know this case was really about Elon Musk being mad at Sam Altman or at OpenAI for being successful without him and wanting Sam and the company punished in some way. So in a room full of very emotional, untrustworthy, unreliable narrators all fighting with each other, did anyone even have a reputation left to lose? Is there a floor here for the AI industry? Liz has a lot of thoughts here. I always enjoy having her on the show. Here's Liz Lopato on Musk v. Altman. Here we go. Liz Zapato, you are a senior Chaos reporter [e-mail] you just covered the Sam Altman and Elon Musk trial. Welcome to Decoder.

[Liz Lopato]

Always a pleasure to be here. I feel like it's always some new, relatively insane thing that we're talking about.

[Neelai Patel]

We have to stop meeting under these circumstances.

[Liz Lopato]

I think these are your favorite circumstances.

[Neelai Patel]

They are my favorite circumstances. A few times a year we drive you absolutely batty by sending you to cover something, and this trial was 100% one of those situations. The copy got increasingly unhinged. I Think the audience liked it. But you were in the courtroom for the majority of Musk v. Altman. You got to see a bunch of the testimony live as these guys took the stand, as Mira Morati and others took the stand. We'll start at the high level. I think the audience probably knows Elon Musk lost. But what was this case about and what were the vibes in the courtroom?

[Liz Lopato]

There are two things that we should distinguish. There was what the case was ostensibly about, and then there was what the case was actually about. And those are two entirely separate things. So ostensibly, the case was about the violation of a charitable trust, which was that Elon Musk had donated a bunch of money to OpenAI foundation and then they created a for profit. He thinks that's a violation of his charitable trust. And also the timing of that was right around what is known as the blip, when Sam Alton was briefly removed and brought back. Put a pin on that. It's going to be important here. That's sort of what we're ostensibly there for. And because it was around the blip, Microsoft was accused of aiding and abetting. And Microsoft very quickly became my favorite part of the case. That's what we were theoretically doing. But in reality, there had been so many changing legal strategies around this. This case was filed, I think, two years ago in state court and then withdrawn and then put in federal court. And there's just been sort of a myriad of things that have shuffled around since then, including, like, a charge that got dropped right before we went to court. To me, I think that the main point of this was punishing Sam Altman and maybe trying to kneecap OpenAI. And, you know, this is like a case where it's like the two worst people, you know, are fighting. So it's kind of hard to root for anyone. The most common, like, response that I tended to get when I would talk about this to people or when I would post about it on social media was like, can they both go to jail? That's kind of the vibe the courtroom was. It was a little bit of a zoo. During Musk's testimony, we had one woman who got called down in front of the courtroom by the judge and chewed out because she had been taking photos in the courthouse. On the very last day, we had a guy who was ejected because he had been recording the proceedings in the courtroom. So there was like some. There were some shenanigans. And then every time we would leave the courthouse, there would be some kind of protest going on, usually behind the lawyers, as they were trying to, like, give their, like, daily summary and, like, spin what they had, what they had done in the courtroom. And then parading behind them would be a guy in a cyber truck holding an Elon socks.

[Neelai Patel]

Perfect.

[Liz Lopato]

So that was what that was.

[Neelai Patel]

I want to come to the legal issues and particularly the ruling from the jury. There's a lot of mechanics there. I just want to second the point that the goal here was for Elon Musk to punish Sam Altman and connect that to the protests and the comments you're getting on social media and certainly the comments we get every time we publish anything about AI. Is there any reputation left to damage for Sam Altman or the AI industry as a whole? Because it seems like both these guys are at all time lows. I'm thinking about jury selection when the judge had to just say, it seems like no one likes Elon Musk, but we're going to have to trust that the jury will be fair. What's even left to take away here?

[Liz Lopato]

I kind of think there's no floor about these things. One of the things that I will say is that from my perspective, I also view Sam Altman as untrustworthy, which is one of the things that this trial was, like, really driving home as, like, one of the points that, you know, Elon Musk's lawyers were making. And, like, I agree. I also think everybody else in the trial was totally untrustworthy. It was like, not just Sam Altman. It was all of them. And one of the things that I found myself thinking about was that I think the person who really got damaged the most was Mira Moradi, who, at least as far as I know, didn't have a reputation as being somebody who was untrustworthy or conniving or whatever. And then in testimony from former OpenAI board members, we found out that she was one of the reasons that Sam Altman got fired and then was immediately texting Sam Altman, like, oh, no, Sam, it's very bad. It's very bad. Sam, you remember during the splip that, like, Altman was fired for. What was it? It was a pattern of being untrustworthy or something.

[Neelai Patel]

It was he not consistently candid with the board, which could have meant anything.

[Liz Lopato]

Anything. And, like, the thing that I remember, because I gossip with a bunch of journalists and we are ferocious gossips, is all of us were like, oh, he did something illegal. Like, let's find out what illegal thing he did. Which, like, as far as I can tell, no, he didn't like. It was just that, like, he was engaging in what I would characterize as relatively normal executive shenanigans, where you are maintaining your control of the company by sort of pitching your subordinates against each other. A strategy that is widely used in corporate America, by the way. So, you know, she wouldn't tell people that she was involved in his removal, and she was like, the CEO, the interim CEO, and then, like, publicly supported him, and then, like, publicly was involved in bringing him back.

[Neelai Patel]

I think someone on the stand, I don't remember who, said Mira was waiting to see which way the wind would blow and didn't realize she was the wind.

[Liz Lopato]

That was Helen Toner, who was one of the board members who stepped down in this debacle. Because, you know, obviously, like, as this proceeded, it became clear that by firing Sam in the way that they had fired him, they had jeopardized the entire company. One of the things that I thought was really interesting from Sam's testimony that I did believe, by the way, is that he thought about just taking a job at Microsoft and getting paid and not having to deal with any headaches anymore. And, like, I can certainly imagine after having been really publicly and embarrass fired and like, having gone through, you know, all of the annoying things that one goes through as a manager and especially as a CEO, just being like, you know what? I just. I just want a paycheck.

[Neelai Patel]

Who among us has not thought about retiring to a comfy job at Microsoft?

[Liz Lopato]

Right? And so, like, when he was talking about that, I was like, yeah, that. Actually, that. I believe that that would. That sounds real. And then he obviously changed his mind. But one of the things that I thought was really interesting about that is that also Helen Toner, who, you know, we saw in deposition testimony, one of the things that we found out was that she was involved in potentially trying to sell OpenAI to Anthropic, a company that she has some ties to through the EA movement. And so, like, again, no one here comes off looking good. Like, I thought for a while that Helen Toner was maybe the most reliable witness we had heard from. And then in the cross on the deposition, it was like, so tell us about your relationship with Anthropic. And I was like, like, oh,

[Neelai Patel]

that's actually the thing that struck me about this entire trial. It Helen Toner being wrapped up in Anthropic is one thing, but the entire AI industry at the top is like 10 people who are wrapped up in each other emotionally, professionally. They're writing each other obsequious emails, particularly to Elon, just full of flattery and praise about how great everyone is. The idea that they're going to make AGI is taken for granted in some way. Like, these are the leaders of a. A new religion in like a real way. You can see it. And then they all lack any management instincts or emotional maturity to deal with the kinds of tasks they're putting in front of them or the stakes or the money. And you can just see it like it's in the trial, it's in the evidence that they're cracking under the pressure that they're putting one another under. And there's no outlet. In fact, the only outlet might have been Sasha Nadella, who comes off as the coolest cucumber around because he's just like, I don't know, is this gonna make money? Don't call me like, that's basically his whole vibe.

[Liz Lopato]

Again, I loved Microsoft in this case. I'm not a Microsoft user really. I'm familiar with their products, which, by the way, their opening statement was so good. It was just a list of things of Microsoft products you might have used at some length.

[Neelai Patel]

Remember us?

[Liz Lopato]

It was fantastic. They were just like, we're not sure why we're here, but you know us, we're Microsoft. You've used Windows, surely. Do you like Xbox? That's us. So that was great. There was really a sense in which the only adult in the room at any given time was somebody from Microsoft. We saw that over and over again where Satya Nadella is like, don't text me. Don't leave a paper trail. His emails are not especially spicy. Like, I think the spiciest they got is something like him being like, well, we don't want to be IBM and have them be Microsoft.

[Neelai Patel]

This is open end. He doesn't want to be the commodity provider of data center hardware and their software. Be the important thing. Which is what happened to IBM and Microsoft.

[Liz Lopato]

That's right. Which by the way, totally understandable sentiment, I feel.

[Neelai Patel]

Yeah. Especially from Microsoft. He's like, I know, I know, I know what's happening here.

[Liz Lopato]

That was like the spiciest thing we got out of Microsoft. Like, that was it. So these are people who, in addition to sort of having the management chops and like having the sense of like what you do and don't do, were also just like a little bit less dramatic and like over and over again we'd have a witness and there would be some like really brutal and devastating cross from OpenAI. And then Microsoft would get up and be like, was Microsoft there? Was satya Nadella there. Does anyone from Microsoft know anything about any of this? No further questions, your honor.

[Neelai Patel]

Amazing.

[Liz Lopato]

Great. It was like a beautiful punchline every single time.

[Neelai Patel]

That's very funny. We're going to pause here for a quick break. We'll be right back.

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[Neelai Patel]

So Microsoft obviously put a bunch of money into OpenAI. Nadella had that famous quote about being above them, below them, around them, referring to Azure and its dependency in Azure and how they would deploy OpenAI's models. But eventually the trial comes down to, did they illegally convert this charity to a for profit? And along the way, take something from Elon Musk. What were. What was the actual jury verdict on those. On those counts?

[Liz Lopato]

The jury verdict was that Elon Musk filed the suit too late and the statute of limitations had run out. I'm going to be real with you. I think that had there not been a statute of limitations question, he still would have lost. This was a pretty weak case. But we're going to start with the statute of limitations stuff because that is, like, the most relevant. And then I will walk you through all the rest of it, because we did do all of this in exhausting detail. And that was the last, like, month of my life. So one of the things that was part of Musk's case was that he claimed that he didn't think his trust had been violated until the blip. And so for this reason, he was still within the statute of limitations. And the law, I believe, is that you need to file within three years. We saw a bunch of evidence that he had been read in repeatedly on the conversion to a for profit, the various investment rounds. I found myself unexpectedly sympathetic to Sam Altman during this trial. So congrats, Sam. He kept trying to, like, get Elon to, like, like him again. You know, there would be these emails where it was like, hey, like, we're raising this round. Or he'd be like emailing people to see what kind of mood Musk was in, if it was a good time to talk to him, because, you know, he just wanted to make sure that Elon knew what he was doing. And, like, was it a good time that for them to chat? Was Elon in a good mood? Which, by the way, like, if you have a person whose job it is to tell people whether you're in a good mood or not, I strongly feel that suggests that you maybe are difficult.

[Neelai Patel]

Yeah. How deep is today's K hole? Let's. Let's find out before we push. Before we ask for money, there was

[Liz Lopato]

evidence of Musk being read in every single step of the way, knowing about the Microsoft investments, knowing about, like, the fact that they were creating this for profit. In fact, there was a bunch of email evidence that he thought that making OpenAI a nonprofit had been a mistake, that it should have been for profit from the jump. So there's just, like, there's a ton of evidence that, separately from the timeline question, suggests that OpenAI would have won this case. Not least because, like, the charitable trust thing, the definition of a charitable trust. And I'm going to mangle this slightly because I am not a lawyer, but, you know, you have to have, like, a specific purpose on your donations, and so you have to have established that this is a trust. And then the next thing you have to establish is that that trust was violated. Just looking at all of the donations, which we did in some depth, there were no strings attached that any of us saw. No one at all remembered there being any strings attached. Like, one of the more devastating lines of testimony was that Siobhan Zillis was asked, like, were there strings attached to these donations? She was like, well, not that recall. And then in the closing statement, OpenAI's lawyer is like, man, not even the mother of his children can corroborate his account.

[Neelai Patel]

Okay, that's brutal.

[Liz Lopato]

So, you know, there were no strings attached. And then we had a financial analysis that showed that that money was gone very, very quickly, that they had been spending. Because AI is expensive. They had, like, spent it. They had spent it in the way that it was meant to be spent. All the other money that happened afterwards had nothing to do with Elon Musk. So there was that. One of the things that I'm just going to put an asterisk on here that I thought was interesting, but didn't I think write about was that Musk had been paying the rent for OpenAI. They actually had to go back and ask him for money, because Neuralink was in the building. And when they got accountants to try to get their books in order so that they could proceed, the accountants were like, oh, yeah, you can't be supporting somebody else's for profit business in this building. You need to get rent money from neuralink. They need to pay you back. And so my suspicion is not that we went into this in any depth, but that Musk had been taking a write off on all of those donations on this building and had been also taking that write off on the space that Neuralink was using, which was why then that money had to be paid back to OpenAI.

[Neelai Patel]

There's a lot here. I mean, there's a lot of just Elon Musk. There's infinitely complicated, fractally expanding OpenAI layers of companies within the nonprofit that have board control and people can fire Sam Altman. All of that seems enormously complex and maybe worth some future litigation. But the jury just went with statute of limitations, and it seems like that's maybe all they should have been talking about if that's what was going to end the case this quickly. Why do you think that we spent all the time in the substance and the complication when Elon had just filed too late?

[Liz Lopato]

Several things, because I did get people asking me about this as well. Like, isn't statute of limitations a legal issue? Why didn't the judge rule on this? Yeah, and the answer is there was a question of fact, which was, when should Elon have known what was going on? And he's saying, I didn't know until the blip. And so I'm within the statute of limitations. And everybody else was saying, he's known the entire time, it's over. That was the thing that was being litigated. It wasn't the only thing that was being litigated, but that was the one that ended up mattering, is that the jury was like, yeah, he definitely knew all of this was happening.

[Neelai Patel]

If the goal was to trash Sam Altman, of course you would pick the blip.

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Right.

[Neelai Patel]

Because then you get to pull every document and email and text message from the blip into the trial, into evidence. You get to publish it. We published it. Was that the goal was Elon just saying, I only knew about this when Sam Altman got fired in order to put all of that damaging evidence into the record.

[Liz Lopato]

I think that was what was actually going on. I think it was also meant to distract OpenAI because they did have to pay this very expensive law firm to do some very expensive work. To defend them. They didn't just defend the statute of limitations. They defended all of the sub claims and all of the other sorts of things as well. Which is why there is so much in our stories is that they were bringing forward as much as they could to defend every single part of every possible claim because they had to. I think that like making Sam Altman look bad, distracting Sam Altman maybe, you know, removing resources as Altman approached an ipo. I think those were probably the primary goals. Musk would have been happy with a win. I think he certainly would have been thrilled to force OpenAI to give up a bunch of money, even if it went back to the OpenAI foundation, as he belatedly decided it should go. There are any of a number of things that I think he would have taken as icing on the cake. And you know, he's, he said that he's going to continue this through the appeals process.

[Neelai Patel]

Elon appeared at a Forbes conference and he said, I think this is a dangerous precedent to set if someone can take a non profit and convert it to a for profit that undermines all charitable giving in America. I don't think Elon understands how precedent works, but it seems regardless of that, he's, he's going to keep tying OpenAI up in litigation for as long as he can.

[Liz Lopato]

Oh yeah. I mean, he said something very similar to that on the stand, by the way. He has like some pet phrases he likes and like dangerous precedent to set undermines all charitable giving in America are like on, on the list. I think he does intend to tie OpenAI up in litigation for as long as he possibly can. You know, bleeding them for cash. Which is a strategy that we've seen other billionaires use. Most famously Sheldon Adelson, who went after a Las Vegas paper, if I remember correctly. Not because like they had done anything wr and they were in fact ruled not to have done anything wrong, but because defending the case was so financially expensive that they nearly went under. That is a strategy you can use if you have unlimited resources, is you can just bleed somebody out.

[Neelai Patel]

I do feel like if you're Elon Musk and you're really worried about rich people using their charities to enrich themselves, there are a handful of people in his direct orbit running the country you might want to, might want to take a closer look at like this seems like he's saying it because he just wants to keep screwing with OpenAI.

[Liz Lopato]

Oh, absolutely. Like there's no doubt in my mind that this is like personal for him. And I, the The thing that I am unable to quite tell. I've been thinking about this for a while. Is he personally pissed off at Sam Altman or is he just affronted that OpenAI succeeded without him?

[Neelai Patel]

We have to take another short break here. We'll be back in just a

[Liz Lopato]

Foreign.

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[Neelai Patel]

This is my other question. Maybe you kill OpenAI and it goes away and you've bought yourself some time. Elon has publicly said that they built Grok incorrectly and they need to start over. They are selling a huge amount of data center capacity at Colossus 1 to Anthropic, who Elon has hated in the past, but he says it's all fine now because they showed up with a check to buy his data center capacity. Even if you kill OpenAI, it doesn't make Xai the winner. They're basically starting over. As they publicly said, they're giving up their compute capacity. What is the point of this except to just vindictively kill OpenAI? Like it doesn't seem like I can identify the competitive advantage here.

[Liz Lopato]

Killing a competitor is not necessarily not a competitive advantage. Especially if you, if you kill the

[Neelai Patel]

let's say OpenAI is in first or second or third or something or just like running in a different direction on the track at this point, who knows what they're doing? If you're in last, it doesn't matter. Like in some way like he's helped Anthropic and Google here.

[Liz Lopato]

Think about this. Let's say Musk wins and OpenAI has to disgorge all this money and that potentially just blows a hole in the side of the company. I can't rule out that Altman is enough of like a deals guy that he could patch it up, but let's say he can. OpenAI is at the center of a web of deals. They are huge deals with places like Core Weave and Oracle and Microsoft. All of these companies. Every company in the AI space is like one degree of Kevin Bacon away from OpenAI. Okay. And so if you knock that company out, not only do you have a bunch of talent that comes free and like needs a job now which you can maybe hire, you also have created conditions where you can negotiate really favorable terms in these now suddenly open data centers with companies that now suddenly have huge holes in the revenue.

[Neelai Patel]

I wish I could ascribe that level of 3D chess, but there's a part of me that says this is just personal and vindictive. And we're going to see appeals and further campaigns about how Sam Altman stole a charity. And that will be distracting for OpenAI on one level. And on another level, they're just going to continue selling codecs to people because it is good at writing code. And a lot of software companies seem very taken by that. Do you think this has any meaningful effect on OpenAI in the future?

[Liz Lopato]

No. I mean, like, here's the thing. We knew going into this trial that Sam Altman did not have a reputation for being perfectly honest. Right? That was the upshot of the blip. There was a 17, 000 word article in the New Yorker about this. This is something that I effectively think is priced in in the same way that Elon Musk's let's say, scattershot relationship with the truth is also priced in in all of his companies. Like the, like people know who these guys are. None of this is a surprise, which is why I think again that the person who got hurt the most here is Mira Morati, who did not have her reputation trashed before this.

[Neelai Patel]

So there's going to be an appeal. These companies are going to carry on spending money. What do you think happens next? What should people be looking for? Or is this one safe to set aside for now?

[Liz Lopato]

I would set it aside for now. We had all the fun of going through their emails. We had their ridiculous text messages. The biggest thing, I think that was the takeaway from the trial that matters is discovering that GROK sucks, even though Elon Musk had distilled everybody's models, which to me that's shocking. Not that I am an expert in AI. It's entirely possible that you can distill all these models and have your AI still suck. But I think that, that, that really is a take home point is that one of the consistent things that we were seeing in this trial was that the nerdiest of the nerds, Brockman and Ilya Skatsver were both like, he's not really serious about AI. And I came away being like yeah, he's not serious about AI. He doesn't know what he's doing. We have all of the things that you talked about with, they're starting over from scratch. They're leasing out their data center capacity. They're doing all of these things that suggest that whatever Musk did with whatever billions of dollars, because I think Xai was spending, the reporting was a billion dollars a month. They're starting over from scratch. There's nothing. And this is even with cheating by distilling everybody's models.

[Neelai Patel]

Right? This is him saying, we didn't build it the right way. They didn't actually do a proper training run. They distilled all the other models. And so they're not on the frontier, which, by the way, has happened to other companies. Meta is out there saying that they were not on the frontier and they started over in a meaningful way. This is a nascent industry. It's not clear how to do these things or build these things or ship these things in a way that work. My big question coming out of all of this is, boy, this handful of people that have been entrusted with spending all this money and asking for all these resources and in many ways pitching a vision of the future, they seem so immature. And even if that's priced in, did this trial just reveal that fundamentally there immature? And maybe you should let the Microsofts and the Googles of the world be in charge of deploying this technology because at least the amount of, like, bureaucracy in place at those companies will slow them down.

[Liz Lopato]

That could be one takeaway given the way that Google has destroyed its own search engine for its AI models. I'm not clear that we want to include Google in this conversation.

[Neelai Patel]

I'm just.

[Liz Lopato]

We're maybe talking about Microsoft and like, maybe Apple, but yeah, like, you want grownups in charge of this technology for sure. The immaturity I thought was really interesting because there was a recurring theme which was that over and over again, you'd get somebody on the stand and they'd be like, ever since I was a child, I've dreamed of AI. I've thought about the smart computer and how amazing it would be. And it kept me up at nights when I was nine years old. And like, I just want to say, like, first of all, that's stupid because that's fiction. And like, if you can't tell the difference between fiction and reality, we have like, bigger problems. And it's like, okay, but like, I had some childhood dreams too, and like, I want to be real with you. I just don't think that owning a horse is going to be, like, a thing that makes sense for me.

[Neelai Patel]

You know, at least they sent the Victorian industrialist to finishing school. That's. That's basically what you're getting at, by the way. I just want to point this out. As we're speaking, there is breaking news. Andres Karpathy has joined Anthropic, which is just.

[Liz Lopato]

Sorry.

[Neelai Patel]

Which is like a perfect capstone on this trial. Right. He's like a main character. He gets recruited to and from all these companies, and now he's at Anthropic, which seems like far and away the winner of this whole thing. Like, hands the cleanest products, the most successful. Why did you start laughing that hard?

[Liz Lopato]

A recurring theme in the trial was Musk poaching OpenAI engineers. And, of course, Andrea Karpathy was one of them. He went from OpenAI to Tesla because OpenAI, when it was a foundation, was asked by Elon in a way that's suggested. It was not actually an ask, if you follow me, to come work on autopilot, because they were having a hard time with autopilot at Tesla. And so several engineers, including Greg Bachman, went over and worked on autopilot while they were theoretically, like, working for OpenAI. So if anybody was stealing resources from a charity, I kind of think it was Elon Musk. One of the people who permanently stayed was Karpathy. He shows up again and again, like this recruiting push that Musk made out of OpenAI, while it was still a nonprofit, while he was still theoretically involved with it, while he was still theoretically on the board and had, like, a fiduciary duty to the nonprofit, he was using it as a recruiting ground for Tesla.

[Neelai Patel]

That's very good. Well, Liz, I have a feeling we're going to keep you very busy with these characters in the year to come. You know, my prediction is that OpenAI does not end the year looking the same as it does now that there will be yet more change at that company.

[Liz Lopato]

I think that's right. The other cherry that I'd like to put on top of all of this, speaking of Anthropic, is that one of my personal favorite parts of this trial occurred while the jury was out of the room. And it was an evidence dispute about whether or not the jury could be shown a jackass trophy. And it was like, imagine a participation trophy that is just the back half of a donkey. And it said something like, never stop being a jackass. For safety. For AI safety. It was presented to an AI safety guy who, when Musk was on the way out at OpenAI and was doing a Q and A session, was like, hey, it sounds like you're really interested in speed over safety. I don't think that's a good idea. And Musk called him a jackass. And so would you like to take a guess at who was one of the people involved in presenting that trophy?

[Neelai Patel]

Was it Copathy?

[Liz Lopato]

It was Dario Amadei.

[Neelai Patel]

Amazing. Perfect. And that tracks with everything Anthropic has stood for, right? This is everyone's leaving to start a safer AI company, and Dario was like among the first perfect. Did he take the trophy with him?

[Liz Lopato]

The lawyers had it, so I assume he's gotten it back. We published a photo, but I remain very entertained by this trophy. So, like, hats off to the fine engineers who eventually did leave and make Anthropic because it seems like they have a pretty good sense of humor.

[Neelai Patel]

Yeah, they figured it out. All right, Liz, we'll have you back soon, hopefully under more rational circumstances. But it's always a pleasure. Thanks for being on Decoder.

[Liz Lopato]

My pleasure.

[Neelai Patel]

I'd like to thank Liz for taking the time to join Decoder and thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it.

[Liz Lopato]

It.

[Neelai Patel]

If you like, let us know what you thought of this episode or really anything else at all. Drop us a line. You can email us atdecoder the verge.com we really do read all the emails. Or you can hit me up directly on Threads or Blue sky. We're also on YouTube. You can watch full episodes at Decoder Pod. We also have a TikTok and Instagram. They're also at Decoder Pod and they're a lot of fun. If you like Decoder, please share it with your friends and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Decoder is production. The Verge and part of the Box Media Podcast Network show is produced by Kate Cox, Nick Stat, and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. The Decoder Music is by Brakemaster Cylinder. We'll see you next time.

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