Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified in federal court on Monday that Elon Musk never contacted him with concerns that Microsoft’s investments in OpenAI violated any special terms or commitments. Musk testified that Microsoft’s increasingly lucrative arrangement with OpenAI is what convinced him that Sam Altman was atteping to “steal the charity.”
CNBC reports that Microsoft boss Satya Nadella concluded several hours of testimony in the Musk v. Altman trial where he answered questions about Microsoft’s strategic partnership with OpenAI, the companies’ relationship, and his involvement during the chaotic period when Sam Altman was briefly removed as OpenAI’s CEO. Altman is scheduled to begin his testimony on Tuesday, according to his lawyers.
Elon Musk filed a lawsuit in 2024 against OpenAI, Altman, and company president Greg Brockman, alleging they abandoned their commitment to maintain the artificial intelligence company’s nonprofit structure and follow its charitable mission. Microsoft is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, with Musk accusing the company of aiding and abetting OpenAI’s alleged breach of charitable trust.
Microsoft has been a major backer of OpenAI since 2019, years before the company gained widespread attention with the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. The company has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI, including $1 billion in 2019, $2 billion in 2021, and $10 billion in 2023. These investments have been a recurring topic throughout the trial.
Nadella testified that he was very proud Microsoft took the risk to invest in OpenAI when no one else was willing to support the emerging lab. Musk previously said the $10 billion investment was the critical point that convinced him OpenAI was violating its nonprofit mission. Musk testified that the scale of the investment troubled him and prompted him to open a legal investigation into OpenAI. “I was concerned they were really trying to steal the charity,” Musk said from the stand.
Nadella said he did not believe Microsoft’s investments in OpenAI were donations, stating there was a clear commercial element to their partnership from the beginning. During the partnership’s early years, Microsoft provided OpenAI with significant discounts on computing resources, and Microsoft believed it would gain marketing benefits from the arrangement. During a separate video deposition played Monday morning, Michael Wetter, a corporate development executive at Microsoft, said the company has recognized approximately $9.5 billion in revenue through its partnership with OpenAI as of March 2025.
Musk co-founded OpenAI alongside Altman, Brockman, and several other executives and researchers in 2015. After disagreements about OpenAI’s direction, including a failed attempt to merge it with Tesla, Musk left the OpenAI board in 2018. He subsequently launched a competing AI startup, xAI, which he merged with SpaceX earlier this year.
OpenAI established a for-profit subsidiary in the months following Musk’s departure, allowing the company to raise outside funding more easily. Investors, including Microsoft, have since invested billions of dollars into OpenAI’s for-profit arm, and the company’s valuation has ballooned as it became a leader in the AI space.
In November 2023, Altman was briefly fired from his role at OpenAI after the board determined he had not been consistently candid in his communications. He was reinstated days later following intense negotiations. Nadella said he was quite surprised by the board’s decision and that his priority was maintaining continuity for Microsoft customers.
During conversations with OpenAI board members after the firing, Nadella said he was trying to understand the language in OpenAI’s statement about Altman being not consistently candid while communicating with the board. Nadella said that language “just didn’t sort of suffice, because this is the CEO of a company that we are invested in and we’re deeply partnered with, and so I felt that they could have explained to me what are the incidents or what is the detail behind it.”
Nadella believed there must have been instances of jealousy or miscommunication that could have justified removing Altman, but no such detailed information was provided by the board. “It was sort of amateur city, as far as I’m concerned,” Nadella testified.
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Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.
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