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Fez – Co-founder and President of OpenAI, Greg Brockman, described a 2017 meeting with Elon Musk as highly tense during testimony in an ongoing legal battle over the future of OpenAI.
Speaking before a federal court in Oakland, Brockman said Musk became visibly upset after he rejected a proposal that would have given the billionaire greater control over the artificial intelligence company.
“I thought he was going to hit me,” Brockman told the court, recalling the atmosphere during the meeting.
According to his testimony, the discussion ended shortly afterward when Musk announced that he would stop funding OpenAI.
Musk had been one of the company’s earliest and most important supporters after helping launch it in 2015.
Brockman, who co-founded OpenAI and is among the defendants in Musk’s lawsuit against the company, testified during the second week of a month-long trial involving Musk and OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman.
The lawsuit centers on OpenAI’s transition from a non-profit organization into a profit-driven business structure.
Brockman told the court that Musk had been aware of the company’s plans to move toward a commercial model.
He explained that OpenAI initially operated as a non-profit organization before creating a for-profit arm to attract billions of dollars in investment needed to develop advanced artificial intelligence systems.
The testimony also touched on Shivon Zilis, a former OpenAI board member who is expected to testify later in the trial.
Brockman said Zilis once informed him she had given birth to twins, though he only later learned through media reports that Musk was the father.
According to Brockman, Zilis later told him that the pregnancy happened through in vitro fertilization and that her relationship with Musk was “purely friendship.”
Brockman added that OpenAI trusted Zilis to manage conflict-of-interest matters related to Musk after his departure from the company.
Zilis left OpenAI’s board in March 2023, around the same time Musk launched XAI, an artificial intelligence company developing a chatbot designed to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
