OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testified in May 2026 that Elon Musk did “huge damage” to the culture of the AI startup, offering sharp criticism of his former co-founder as part of Musk’s ongoing lawsuit against the company.
During testimony, Altman said Musk required OpenAI president Greg Brockman and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever to rank researchers by their accomplishments and “take a chainsaw through a bunch.” Altman acknowledged this reflected Musk’s known management style, but argued it was incompatible with running a research organization.
“I don’t think Mr. Musk understood how to run a good research lab,” Altman testified, responding to questions from his lawyer, William Savitt. “For a research lab where people need, sort of, psychological safety and long periods of time to pursue an idea, this idea that you constantly have to show your results, and if they’re not good enough on a short period, you’re going to get fired. That really didn’t work for the kind of research we went on to successfully do.”
Altman also said Musk’s departure ultimately provided a morale boost, with staff realizing they no longer had to “work this way anymore.”
Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 alongside Altman and Brockman, but left the startup in 2018. OpenAI said at the time that Musk was departing to avoid a conflict of interest with Tesla’s machine learning work, though testimony in the lawsuit is presenting a different account of his exit.
Musk’s lawsuit claims OpenAI abandoned its original mission of benefitting humanity and that Altman and Brockman misled him into providing funding for the company. The testimony suggests the legal battle may further expose internal tensions from the startup’s early years.
Source: The Verge