“You just happen to be $30 billion richer?” the lawyer asked.

“Compensation was certainly secondary to the mission,” Greg Brockman replied.

The exchange, captured by NBC News from a federal courthouse in Oakland, distills the central tension of Musk v. Altman into a single beat. Brockman, OpenAI’s president and co-founder, was on the stand for the fourth day of a trial that could upend the most important AI company in the world. And the number that kept surfacing — more than a dozen times across two hours of questioning — was $30 billion.

That is the approximate value of Brockman’s personal stake in OpenAI, the company he helped found in 2015 as a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring artificial intelligence would “benefit all of humanity.” Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI alongside Brockman and CEO Sam Altman, is suing to unwind the company’s conversion to a for-profit entity. He wants $134 billion in damages, the removal of Brockman and Altman, and a court order reversing the for-profit restructuring — arguing they unlawfully converted a charity into a private enrichment vehicle.

The trial has produced the kind of courtroom theater Silicon Valley rarely sees. Musk, whose net worth Bloomberg estimates at $657 billion, has already testified. His family office chief, Jared Birchall, told the court he sent roughly 60 contributions totaling about $38 million from Musk to OpenAI between 2016 and 2020. Altman is expected to testify later in the three-week proceeding.

The $30 Billion Man

Brockman testified that OpenAI’s board granted him his stake in 2018 — years before ChatGPT turned the company into a household name, when its success was far from certain. He said he did not participate in the board vote that awarded him the equity.

Pressed by Musk’s attorney Steven Molo, Brockman insisted the money had never been the point. “I believe that we have developed the most well-capitalized nonprofit in human history,” he testified, according to NBC News.

The numbers partially support the claim. OpenAI was valued at $852 billion after its most recent funding round in March, the company has said. After an October restructuring, the nonprofit foundation arm retained a 26% stake, while employees held another 26%. Brockman testified that the nonprofit had received less than $150 million in total donations — a figure seemingly designed to diminish Musk’s $38 million in contributions and underscore that the real value was created by those who stayed.

But Molo kept returning to what Brockman got personally. He quoted from a September 2017 journal entry in which Brockman wrote: “Financially, what will take me to $1B?” When Molo asked whether Brockman would consider capping his compensation at $1 billion and returning the remaining $29 billion to the charity, Brockman demurred. “That’s not how I think about it,” he said. “There are assumptions baked into the question.”

Conflicts Upon Conflicts

The testimony also surfaced financial entanglements that go beyond equity stakes. Brockman was initially compensated at OpenAI with a $10 million stake in Altman’s family office — an arrangement Musk was not immediately told about, though Brockman said it was disclosed in 2017 when Musk asked.

Brockman acknowledged investing in several companies that later signed major partnerships with OpenAI, including chipmaker Cerebras, cloud provider CoreWeave, and fusion startup Helion Energy, according to Wired. Altman’s own investments in companies doing business with OpenAI have drawn extensive scrutiny. Brockman’s comparable ties had attracted far less attention until Monday.

Then there was the smallest detail, and perhaps the most damning. Brockman once pledged to donate $100,000 to OpenAI when it was being set up. He never followed through.

What’s Actually at Stake

The implications extend well beyond one man’s net worth. OpenAI is planning an initial public offering later this year at a valuation around $1 trillion, The Guardian reported. If Musk prevails — a nine-person jury will decide liability, while Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers determines remedies — that offering could be severely complicated. The outcome would also, conveniently, benefit xAI, the for-profit AI company Musk founded in 2023.

OpenAI’s attorneys have argued that Musk always knew about plans for a for-profit arm and that his lawsuit is “motivated by jealousy” after a failed bid to take control of the company. They note that OpenAI is still overseen by a nonprofit and that its for-profit arm is structured as a public benefit corporation — a legal form that requires balancing mission with shareholder returns.

But structure is not substance. A public benefit corporation is still a corporation. A nonprofit holding 26% of a trillion-dollar company is still a minority shareholder. And a president who once wondered how to reach his first billion now controls a stake worth thirty times that — while insisting, with evident sincerity, that the money was never the point.

Two days before the trial began, Musk texted Brockman to explore a settlement. When Brockman suggested both sides drop their claims, Musk replied: “By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so be it.”

The hatred may or may not materialize. The fortune already has.

Sources