OpenAI’s internecine legal war with longtime antagonist Elon Musk just got weirder, reaching all the way to Mars.
OpenAI President Greg Brockman testified Tuesday that Musk’s early support for transitioning the startup into a for-profit entity was tethered to a singular, extraterrestrial condition: absolute control to fund his $80 billion vision of colonizing Mars.
The testimony arrived during the second week of a landmark trial that could fundamentally reshape the future of OpenAI, the organization behind the ubiquitous ChatGPT. As the company prepares for a staggering $50 billion expenditure on computing resources in 2026, it finds itself locked in a bitter legal battle with its former co-founder.
Brockman described a pivotal 2017 meeting where the altruistic goals of the then-nonprofit clashed with Musk’s industrial scale. According to Brockman, Musk argued that a nonprofit structure was insufficient to raise the capital required for advanced AI development. However, Musk’s price for leadership was a majority stake—one he allegedly intended to use as a financial engine for SpaceX’s interplanetary goals.
“He said he needed $80 billion to create a city [on Mars],” Brockman testified. “In the end, he needed full control.” Brockman added that Musk insisted on being the sole arbiter of when that control would ever be relinquished.
The courtroom witnessed a vivid account of the moment the partnership fractured. What began as a friendly exchange — including gifts of Tesla Inc. vehicles to staff and a commemorative painting for Musk — devolved into a confrontation. Brockman testified that Musk grew incensed over a proposed equity structure, stood up so abruptly that Brockman feared physical confrontation, and “stormed out” with the painting in hand, vowing to freeze all funding.
Musk, who left the board in 2018, alleges he was “conned” into donating $38 million under the guise of a charitable mission. He is seeking $150 billion in damages and the removal of both Brockman and CEO Sam Altman, accusing them of abandoning their founding principles to enrich themselves.
The defense countered by scrutinizing Brockman’s own financial motivations. On Monday, Brockman acknowledged his OpenAI stake is worth approximately $30 billion. Lawyers also produced a 2017 diary entry where Brockman mused, “Financially, what will take me to $1B?”
OpenAI maintains that Musk’s litigation is fueled by resentment over the company’s success following his departure and a desire to bolster his own AI firm, xAI, which recently merged with SpaceX.
The stakes are historically high.
OpenAI is eyeing a $1 trillion IPO later this year, while SpaceX faces its own potential public offering. Filings revealed that SpaceX’s board has authorized a massive share grant for Musk if the company reaches a $7.5 trillion valuation and establishes a Mars colony of one million people. As the trial continues, the court must now decide if OpenAI’s pivot to profit was a necessary evolution or a multibillion-dollar betrayal.
“The trial highlights an important industry-wide issue that AI companies need governance structures that can scale with the power, complexity, and commercial impact of their systems,” Kate Shen, cofounder of Anaxi Labs, said in an email. “As AI moves from research labs into core infrastructure, the questions become bigger than any single company — how incentives are aligned, how safety commitments are maintained, and how trust is preserved as these systems become more capable and widely deployed.”
Marc Fernandez, chief strategy officer at Neurologyca, said the scenario “reminds me of Mozilla. It was created as a nonprofit foundation with a commercial subsidiary to help preserve an open web and prevent core internet infrastructure from concentrating around a single commercial interest.”
“The structure made sense conceptually, but over time most of the organization’s revenue became tied to a single search partnership. That financial dependency gradually shaped incentives and influence,” he said in an email. “One of the biggest lessons from that period is that governance depends on diversified funding, durable structures, and accountability mechanisms that continue functioning as commercial pressure and market concentration grow.”
