Musk v. Altman: Greg Brockman Took The Stand But Dodged Every Question

Greg Brockman appeared at the trial of Musk v. Altman on May 4, 2026, and somehow maneuvered to have one of the most powerful pieces of evidence against his own company without uttering very much useful at all. It is not a lawyer or expert witness that is the most formidable asset that Elon Musk’s legal team has presented in the courtroom of Oakland. 

Leading up to this testimony, as per spyglass reports, Musk texted Brockman two days before the trial to evaluate a settlement, Brockman suggested both sides drop the charges, Musk response was,“By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be.” as reported by TechCrunch, CNBC, and Bloomberg.

According to TechBuzz, it is a personal journal of Brockman, which contains the most recent entries, which documents the internal transformation of OpenAI over the years. A curious order of proceedings was followed, where Brockman was first cross examined and then directly examined, and immediately set a precedent, which was described by observers as evasive. 

The testimony was rife with evasions like: I wouldn’t characterize it that way, I wouldn’t say it that way, and the most telling of all I would not say it that way. As evidence was being read aloud by the attorney of Musk, Steven Molo, the courtroom seemed to become annoyed with Brockman as he would repeatedly interrupt and correct the attorney on minor issues such as skipping words like a or the. The journal entries are the very ones that actually are the source of the damage. 

Brockman had written over the years that OpenAI was transforming a nonprofit to a capped-profit system, he wrote to himself, without a thought of litigation. Such evidence is hard to reframe due to its authenticity no matter how meticulously attorneys are in trial. Another layer of complexity was introduced by the financial disclosures that were introduced in the course of the testimony. 

Brockman himself, stated during the testimony that his personal stake in OpenAI has ballooned to a current value of almost 30 billion dollars. This handed the Musk’s lawyers a direct line of attack in the courtroom where the main arguments were over the leadership of OpenAI, enriching themselves at the cost of the charitable mission of OpenAI.

Besides his OpenAI equity, Brockman also disclosed meshing financial interests in CEO, Sam Altman. Altman gave Brockman an ownership interest in his family office, which at that time was worth $10 million in 2017. Cerebras, a machine learning chip start-up, is another investment that Altman has made tens of millions of dollars in.

During testimony, an email written by Jared Birchall, the head of Musk’s family office, surfaced in court. The email stated that Altman had “compensated Greg on the side,” with Musk’s legal team arguing the arrangement created a loyalty problem. Musk’s legal team argued the overlapping financial relationships compromised Brockman’s conflict of interests as a decision-maker from the company’s early days. The larger picture matters. 

The case revolves around the claims that Musk, the founder of OpenAI, was against the company policy when it transformed into a capped-profit organization with close connections to Microsoft. Musk is demanding that both Altman and Brockman be removed from their roles and that OpenAI pay up to $134 billion in damages. All the key strategic decisions made during the transformation were made by Brockman.

The internal debates were recorded in his journal. His testimony in the stand is not clearing off their stand. TechBuzz reports that the trial should last around three weeks. Testimony from Sam Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is still to come. In a firm that is nearly to raise its next major funding round, and which competes with Google, Anthropic, and even the xAI of its own founder, there is a cost in every day of that courtroom, which far surpasses its legal fees.