Sam Altman has been sitting in the front row of the gallery for days during the trial of his legal dispute with Elon Musk, a move that highlights the stakes of this lawsuit: the case may clear the way for OpenAI to rush for a trillion-dollar market value IPO, or it may make the CEO ruined and leave the company.
The nine jurors are expected to make a verdict as early as Monday, when Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will decide whether to revoke OpenAI's profit-making restructuring plan, order it to pay $134 billion in damages, or remove Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman.
OpenAI has previously gone through multiple rounds of difficult structural restructuring negotiations with its largest shareholder Microsoft, and also encountered the storm of Altman being temporarily dismissed as CEO. If it wins the lawsuit, it will completely remove the last obstacle to its plan to complete the listing within the next year and hit a trillion yuan and higher valuation plan.
Once the lawsuit is lost, the future of this technological innovation company will be plunged into uncertainty.
Jill Horwitz, a professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, said that this case is related to the original intention of OpenAI’s founding and public interests, and involves many serious legal issues.
But she also admitted that the dispute between the two billionaires over power and interests has deviated from and obscured the core of the law's real concern - public interests.
The trial not only examined various documents and legal rights and responsibilities that were retained when OpenAI was founded in 2015, but the two sides also accused each other of criticizing Musk for being arrogant, questioning Altman's character, and accusing Brockman of seeking personal gain.
After three weeks of evidence, Musk's lawyer Steven Morrow concluded his evidence statement on Thursday. He pointedly pointed out that Brockman holds a personal stake worth US$30 billion in OpenAI, but has never invested a penny in the company, calling it an internal executive who took advantage of nothing. At the same time, he criticized Altman, as CEO, for participating in many transactions that he admitted to have conflicts of interest.
The trial revealed that Altman held more than $2 billion in shares in a number of companies that had business dealings with OpenAI. This week, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into Altman's potential conflicts of interest.
Morrow told the jury: "This case is directly related to Sam Altman's personal credibility... If you don't trust him and believe him, OpenAI will definitely lose. It's that simple."
Lawyers for OpenAI said Musk filed the lawsuit out of jealousy and resentment. He quit the OpenAI board of directors as early as 2018 and asserted that the startup would have no chance of success without him. As a result, ChatGPT rose rapidly and severely slapped his words in the face. Today, OpenAI’s valuation has reached US$852 billion, and Musk’s xAI laboratory has always been unable to keep up with its pace of development.
OpenAI lawyer William Savitt said that the summary of all Musk's rhetoric is: "I, Elon Musk, have all the credit."
He also added: "Musk may have the Midas touch in some fields, but this is not the case in the field of artificial intelligence. Facts have proved that if he wants to make achievements in the AI industry, all Musk can do now is to resort to court."
The OpenAI side also argued that Musk was not opposed to OpenAI turning into a for-profit organization, provided that he took control of the company. He even once proposed merging OpenAI into his own Tesla Motors.
To win over other co-founders, Musk also gave them Tesla cars worth $262,400.