Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is all set to take the stand on Elon Musk’s lawsuits against OpenAI, a case which has exposed the turbulent origins of the company behind popular chatbot ChatGPT. According to a report by news agency AFP, Nadella will be questioned about the internal emails that reveal how Microsoft’s funding helped the ChatGPT maker from a nonprofit research lab into a for-profit AI powerhouse. Nadella’s testimony comes ahead of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, which is expected to take place later this week.
Elon Musk’s allegations against OpenAI
Tesla CEO Musk has accused OpenAI of betraying its original nonprofit mission and misusing his founding donations totalling $38 million to build a company which now values at more than $850 billion. Musk is now demanding OpenAI tp revert to its nonprofit status, a move that could dramatically alter the global AI race against rivals like Anthropic, Google, and Deepseek.On the other hand, OpenAI counters that Musk left the company voluntarily after failing to secure majority control and has also become a direct competitor via his own venture — xAI.
Role of Microsoft in driving OpenAI from its nonprofit roots
As per the AFP report, on Mat 11, Elon Musk’s lawyers are said to argue that Microsoft knowingly helped OpenAI in diverting its roots from nonprofit organisation. The recently disclosed emails from January 2018 show Nadella weighing whether to grant OpenAI discounted access to Azure cloud services. “Overall I can’t tell what research they are doing and how if shared with us it could help us get ahead,” Nadella wrote at the time, noting Musk’s claims that OpenAI was close to breakthroughs in AGI.Despite initial skepticism from Microsoft executives, OpenAI soon created a for-profit arm in order to attract investment. By the year 2019, Microsoft investing $1 billion and eventually poured in an investment of $13 billion which now values around $228 billion.
OpenAI’s former CTO Mira Murati tells court that Sam Altman sowed distrust and chaos among top executives
Last week, Mira Murati, OpenAI’s former chief technology officer (CTO) testified in court that Sam Altman created distrust and confusion among senior leaders at the company. Her testimony came during the ongoing lawsuit filed by Elon Musk against OpenAI, where Musk has accused the company of abandoning its nonprofit mission. Hours after reports about Murati’s testimony surfaced online, Musk publicly responded to a social media post calling her one of the key witnesses in the case. Musk wrote, “Mira is cool,” followed by a heart emoji, drawing attention online amid the high-profile legal battle.Murati’s recorded testimony was played in a federal court in Oakland, California, during the second week of the trial. Speaking about CEO Sam Altman, she said: “My concern was about Sam saying one thing to one person and completely the opposite to another person.” She also claimed Sam Altman was “creating chaos” inside the company and said there were times when he was deceptive with her and other executives. Murati added that despite these concerns, she still wanted Altman to remain CEO after he was temporarily removed from the company in 2023.“OpenAI was at catastrophic risk of falling apart,” she said. “I was concerned about the company completely blowing up.”
