The NewYorkTimes.com reported that “Mr. Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, said on Tuesday that he worried Elon Musk wanted control of the A.I. lab.” The May 12, 2026 article entitled ” Musk Lawyer’s Question for Sam Altman on the Stand: Are You Trustworthy?” (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/technology/sam-altman-openai-trial-elon-musk-lawyers.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share) included these comments from Reporters Cade Metz and Mike Isaac:

Before Elon Musk left OpenAI in a power struggle in 2018, he wanted to merge the nonprofit artificial intelligence lab with Tesla, his electric car company.

Mr. Musk and other OpenAI co-founders met several times to discuss the merger. OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, was even offered a seat on Tesla’s board of directors, according to a court document.

But folding OpenAI into Tesla would have eliminated the lab’s nonprofit status, and that, Mr. Altman said on the witness stand on Tuesday, was something he wanted to avoid.

The question of whether OpenAI would be a nonprofit is the key point in a federal trial in Oakland, Calif., that pits Mr. Musk against the A.I. organization he helped create. Another question that took center stage in court on Tuesday was the trustworthiness of Mr. Altman, who was briefly pushed out of his job three years ago because OpenAI’s board thought he wasn’t always telling it the truth.

Mr. Musk sued OpenAI and Mr. Altman in 2024, claiming that it abandoned its founding agreement as a nonprofit group dedicated to building safe A.I. for the benefit of humanity. Mr. Musk has accused Mr. Altman of “stealing a charity” by attaching a for-profit company onto OpenAI’s original nonprofit and taking billions of dollars in investments from Microsoft.

The debate over who would guide the development of A.I. and whether Mr. Musk’s complaints about the change to its nonprofit status are disingenuous was also a focus during Mr. Altman’s two hours of testimony. Mr. Altman said it had become clear that Mr. Musk wanted to take complete control of OpenAI and repeatedly discussed how to turn it into a for-profit company. Merging it with Tesla was one of several options Mr. Musk offered.

“I believed that A.I. should not be under the control of any one person,” Mr. Altman said.

Interesting trial!

First published at https://www.vogelitlaw.com/blog/sam-altman-cross-examined-about-whether-he-is-trustworthy