Sam Altman Gains Edge as Musk Cross-Examination Turns Difficult

sam altman came up as Elon Musk spent hours under cross-examination in the OpenAI case. Musk said he did not lose his temper, but his answers grew combative and increasingly hard to pin down.

About five hours into the testimony, one reporter wrote, “I have never been more sympathetic to Sam Altman in my life.” That line captured how the exchange looked from inside the courtroom, where Musk refused to answer yes-or-no questions with yes or no.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers

After the jury left the room, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said, “He was at times difficult.” Her remark followed a stretch in which Musk pushed back on William Savitt’s questions and said, “I don’t lose my temper” and “I don’t yell at people.”

Musk also said he might have called someone a “jackass,” but only in the spirit of saying “don’t be a jackass.” That gap between his own description and the judge’s reaction gives the defense a credibility problem to manage in front of the jury.

William Savitt’s deposition push

Savitt kept returning to Musk’s deposition and pointed out that Musk had answered some questions slightly differently there. That tactic matters because the case turns on Musk’s account of OpenAI’s early structure and his later split from it.

The source says Musk initially wanted four board seats and 51 percent of the shares. It also says the other cofounders would get three seats together, to be voted on by shareholders including other employees.

Andrej Karpathy in 2017

The timeline also reaches back to 2017, when Musk hired Andrej Karpathy, OpenAI’s second-best engineer, to Tesla after pulling the plug on his funding commitment. That move puts a concrete edge on the dispute over control, because Musk is not just describing an old disagreement; he is being pressed on what he did after he stopped paying.

The question left hanging now is whether the jury treats Musk’s sharp answers as confidence or as inconsistency, because that choice can shape how his testimony lands on the issue of control.