While Court Was In Session
Three weeks of testimony. One very tired judge.
Thursday was closing arguments day in the Musk v. Altman trial. Musk was in Beijing.
His lead counsel Steven Molo opened by apologizing to the jury for his client's absence. "He's sorry he could not be here," Molo told them. He then extolled the importance of jury duty — to nine people who showed up every day — on behalf of a client who decided Beijing was more important than the ending of the trial he filed. As The Verge's Elizabeth Lopatto noted from the courtroom: "which is never a good sign in a closing statement."
Altman and Brockman were both there.
The arguments themselves covered familiar ground.
Musk's team argued they proved OpenAI misused his donations and violated their duty to uphold the founding ethos. OpenAI countered that the $38 million had no specific strings attached, the mission continues in its current form, the lawsuit was filed too late, and Musk's own misconduct should prevent him from prevailing.
The statute of limitations argument is the one to watch. The judge already signaled that if the jury finds Musk waited too long to sue, she'll likely accept that finding and direct a verdict for the defendants. He tweeted that OpenAI was "captured by Microsoft" in 2020. He didn't sue until 2024. The jury has that timeline.
Nobody — including the court spokesperson — knows whether Musk got the judge's permission to travel. His attorneys didn't respond to requests for comment. The judge who told everyone on day one that courtroom decorum would be a first for them was not consulted, apparently.
The rest of Thursday didn't sit quietly.
Cerebras opened at $350 on Nasdaq — 89% above its $185 IPO price, raising $5.55 billion, the largest US tech IPO since Uber in 2019. Altman, Brockman, and Sutskever are all named backers. The undisclosed stakes that ended up on a courtroom screen three weeks ago just got priced by the market. Same day as closing arguments. The timing continues to not be subtle.
As for where Musk actually was — nobody needed the Elonjet bot for this one. He was on Air Force One. The White House announced it.
In Washington DC, a federal judge cited "red flags" about the $1.5 million SEC settlement over Musk's Twitter stock disclosure — the one that settled for one cent on the dollar of what he allegedly saved, paid by a trust rather than Musk personally, negotiated the same day the SEC's enforcement chief abruptly resigned. "Is Mr. Musk getting some kind of special treatment in this case?" Judge Sparkle Sooknanan asked from the bench. Both sides ordered to answer by June 1.
And Musk was photographed walking through the Great Hall of the People in Beijing alongside his son, Tim Cook, and Jensen Huang, while his lawyer apologized to the jury for his absence at his own trial.
The jury deliberates starting Friday. Judge Gonzalez Rogers issues her own ruling after the advisory verdict — and hers is the one that actually matters legally.
Whatever the jury decides, it doesn't seal the California AG's file. It doesn't close the IRS's interest in the nonprofit self-dealing testimony. It doesn't make the SEC judge in DC go away. It doesn't change Cerebras opening at $350 on the same morning closing arguments were delivered.
The trial ends. The record doesn't.
Part of the ongoing TheranasAI series, a sub-series of Big Tech's War on Users.
Read the terms. They're more honest than the marketing.