Elon Musk's departure from OpenAI in 2017 wasn't a quiet exit, but a dramatic confrontation over control that has now become the centerpiece of a major legal battle. OpenAI president Greg Brockman testified in court this week, sharing deeply personal journal entries that document the moment Musk demanded full control of the company, was refused, and stormed out of the room grabbing a Tesla painting as he left.

What Happened During the August 2017 Meeting That Changed Everything?

In late August 2017, OpenAI's leadership gathered to discuss converting the nonprofit research lab into a for-profit entity to raise the capital needed for artificial general intelligence (AGI), a hypothetical AI system that could match or exceed human intelligence across all domains. The conversation centered on a critical question: who would control the new company?

Musk had already given each co-founder a Tesla Model 3, and OpenAI's head of research, Ilya Sutskever, had commissioned a painting of a Tesla as a friendly gesture. But the mood shifted dramatically when Musk was told the other founders would not grant him full control. According to Brockman's testimony, Musk became visibly angry. He sat quietly for several minutes, then delivered his response: "I decline." Brockman described what happened next as deeply unsettling. "He stood up and stormed around the table," Brockman testified. "I thought he was going to hit me. He grabbed the painting and started to storm out of the room. And then he turned around and said, 'When will you be departing OpenAI?'"

The SpaceX and Tesla founder then stopped his regular donations to OpenAI's operating budget. Within six months, he left the board entirely, though he continued paying for office space the company shared with Neuralink until 2020.

Why Did the Founders Reject Musk's Demand for Control?

The disagreement wasn't about whether to create a for-profit entity. Everyone agreed that was necessary. The conflict was about governance and equity. Musk wanted what he called "unequivocal" control, at least initially. The other founders proposed equal shares, with perhaps additional equity tied to cash investments. There were even discussions about connecting OpenAI to Tesla's AI work.

Brockman testified that the decision to reject Musk's control demand came from a principled position. "It should not be the case that there exists one person with full and absolute control over OpenAI," he stated in court. The founders believed that distributed governance was essential for an organization working on technology as consequential as artificial intelligence.

Brockman

What triggered the urgency to restructure was a pivotal moment in OpenAI's research: an AI model defeated the top human player in the video game DOTA 2. This victory convinced everyone that compute, the raw processing power needed to train AI systems, was the key resource. Brockman explained that fundraising purely as a nonprofit would be insufficient to acquire the massive computing infrastructure required.

How to Understand the Legal and Ethical Stakes of This Dispute

• The Control Question: Musk's demand for unequivocal control reflected his belief that a single visionary leader was necessary to guide OpenAI toward AGI, a position rooted in his experience founding Tesla and SpaceX. The founders disagreed, arguing that distributed governance was more appropriate for an organization with such broad societal implications.
• The Governance Structure: The founders proposed equal shares and equity tied to cash contributions, which would have given Musk influence proportional to his investment but not absolute authority. This reflected a belief in collaborative decision-making rather than founder-led control.
• The Nonprofit Conversion Issue: Brockman's journal entries, which Musk's lawyers have seized upon, reveal internal debate about whether converting to a for-profit without Musk constituted a betrayal of the nonprofit's mission. Brockman wrote that it would be "morally bankrupt" to "steal the non-profit from him," yet the founders ultimately proceeded without him.

Musk's legal team has used Brockman's personal reflections as evidence that the founders prioritized personal wealth over the nonprofit's mission. In one journal entry, Brockman wrote: "This is the only chance we have to get out from Elon. Is he the 'glorious leader' that I would pick? We truly have a chance to make this happen. Financially what will take me to $1B?"

Brockman

During cross-examination, Musk's lead trial attorney Steve Molo pressed Brockman on this point, asking why he didn't donate more of his current stake, now worth almost $30 billion, to the nonprofit. Brockman responded by pointing to what the team had built: "Look at what we accomplished. The OpenAI nonprofit has over $150 billion of OpenAI equity value. That is something we have built through hard work, blood, sweat, and tears, all this time since Elon has left".

Brockman

Brockman also testified that Musk lacked the technical depth to guide OpenAI's AI research. "He did not and does not know AI," Brockman stated, describing how Musk dismissed an early demonstration of the software that would eventually become ChatGPT. "We did not think he was going to spend the time required to actually get good at it." Brockman emphasized that Musk's failure to recognize the potential in that early research was exactly the kind of misjudgment the organization needed to avoid.

The legal battle unfolding now centers on whether the founders "stole a charity," as Musk's lawyers argue, or whether they executed the same for-profit conversion plan that Musk himself had proposed. Brockman's testimony, drawn from personal journal entries never intended for public scrutiny, has become the most detailed account yet of how a power struggle between visionary founders reshaped the trajectory of artificial intelligence development.

Musk voluntarily left OpenAI's board in February 2018, concluding that "OpenAI is on a path of certain failure" and saying he would focus more on AI development at Tesla instead. That prediction proved spectacularly wrong. OpenAI went on to develop ChatGPT, which became the fastest-growing application in history, and the company is now valued at over $150 billion.