Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers's Oakland courtroom resumes the second week of Musk v. Altman Monday after Elon Musk concluded three days of testimony Thursday. Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and Satya Nadella are expected to testify this week. [1] The discovery posture is set; the question is whether week two produces the same kind of own-goal as week one.
Musk's most-replayed admission from the stand was that xAI distills OpenAI models — a structural claim about how Musk's competing AI company built its training pipeline that, by Musk's own counsel's framing in week one, undermines the competitive-damages theory of his case. [2] If Musk's competitive position depended on OpenAI's outputs, the lost-opportunity damages from Altman's for-profit conversion are smaller. The judge has not ruled on the admission's evidentiary weight; OpenAI's lawyers are expected to feature it through Altman's testimony.
The case's central claim — that Altman and Brockman violated their founding promises by converting OpenAI from nonprofit to for-profit — turns on documentary evidence the discovery process has now produced. Musk testified that he was promised a for-profit subsidiary of the nonprofit, not the other way around. [3] OpenAI's evidence has framed Musk's 2017 departure as the moment the structure was negotiated; Musk's evidence has framed it as the moment Altman defected from a deal not yet committed to writing.
The week's structural test for the AI industry is the SpaceX-related question. Musk's April 30 testimony confirmed that xAI was absorbed into SpaceX in February 2026. The cross-examination range on what that absorption did to xAI's distinct corporate identity — and to the warranties Musk gave OpenAI investors at xAI's 2024 launch — opens during week two. [4] How aggressively OpenAI's counsel pursues that line will set the discovery template for any follow-on shareholder litigation.
The Oakland press corps was thinned Friday for the Musk-Caine sidebar at the President's Saturday Truth Social rejection of the Iran 14-point counter. The trial's national-press attention recovers Monday with Altman on the stand. [5]
-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco