Friendship breakups are never easy, but few are as messy and expensive as the collapse of Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s once thriving tech bromance.
On Thursday, closing arguments wrapped up in Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI, leaving a jury to deliberate next week whether Altman and other executives “stole a charity” (as one of Musk’s lawyers put it) by turning much of what was once a nonprofit research lab into a corporate behemoth.
For three weeks, lawyers on both sides have deployed an increasingly unhinged body of evidence in an attempt to discredit both men and prove they’re untrustworthy and power-hungry.
If the jury rules that Musk was duped into donating roughly $38 million to OpenAI under false pretenses, then Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will decide on the damages, which could potentially lead to $150 billion in financial restitution and, while unlikely, could also include major changes to OpenAI’s leadership and governance structure.
Even if the jury does not rule in Musk’s favor, however, it’s possible that the evidence put forth at trial will be enough to convince state regulators to revisit the agreements that allowed OpenAI to restructure into a for-profit enterprise to begin with.
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