OpenAI President Greg Brockman testified Monday in federal court in Oakland, Calif., that his stake in the artificial-intelligence company is worth nearly $30 billion, confirming on the witness stand the figure co-founder Elon Musk has cited in arguing OpenAI abandoned its founding mission as a charity.

The disclosure, on the fourth day of Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI, Brockman and Chief Executive Sam Altman, lands alongside a court filing that shows Musk texted Brockman two days before trial to gauge a settlement and, when rebuffed, warned the two executives would be "the most hated men in America" by week's end. The developments give the jury a starker picture of both the money at stake and the animus driving the case.

On the stand

Brockman was questioned for more than two hours by Musk attorney Steven Molo, who returned to the $30 billion figure more than a dozen times, NBC News reported. Molo asked whether Brockman would cap his own compensation at $1 billion and return the balance to OpenAI's nonprofit arm.

"Do you think, sitting here today, given that you're good with the $1 billion, do you think you should give the $29 billion back to the charity?" Molo asked.

"That's not how I think about it," Brockman responded, adding that there were "assumptions baked into the question."

Brockman testified that OpenAI's board granted him the equity in 2018, years before ChatGPT's late-2022 release, and that he did not vote on his own grant. He said the company remains controlled by a nonprofit foundation and that its commercial arm is a public-benefit corporation that must weigh both mission and shareholder interests. OpenAI was valued at $852 billion in its March funding round; the nonprofit owns 26 percent after an October restructuring, employees another 26 percent.

The settlement text

In a filing late Sunday, OpenAI's lawyers disclosed that Musk reached out to Brockman by text two days before opening arguments. "When Mr. Brockman responded with a suggestion that both sides drop their respective claims, Mr. Musk shot back: 'By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be,'" the filing said.

OpenAI's lawyers argued the exchange "tends to prove motive and bias, and, in particular, that Mr. Musk's motivation in pursuing this lawsuit is to attack a competitor and its principals." U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers declined to enter the message into evidence.

Musk, who left OpenAI's board in 2018 and stopped donating in 2017, sued in 2024, alleging the roughly $38 million he gave in the early years was diverted to unauthorized commercial purposes. From the stand last week, he accused Altman and Brockman of trying to "steal a charity." His own AI venture, xAI, was valued at $250 billion when he merged it with SpaceX in February.

Counterpoint

Brockman pushed back on the framing of personal enrichment, telling the jury that OpenAI's growth was "something that we've built through blood, sweat and tears, during all these years since Elon left." Musk's lawyers had not publicly responded to the settlement-text filing by press time.

Brockman's testimony resumes Tuesday morning. The verdict could reshape governance at the world's most valuable private AI company and set a precedent for how nonprofit-to-for-profit conversions are policed.