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<p id="speakable-summary" class="wp-block-paragraph">Lawyers for Elon Musk and OpenAI made their closing arguments this week, and now it’s up to jurors to decide whether OpenAI did anything wrong as it’s transformed into <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/28/openai-completes-its-for-profit-recapitalization/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a slightly-more-for-profit</a> organization. </p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">But as Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I noted on the latest episode of TechCrunch’s <a href="https://techcrunch.com/podcasts/equity/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Equity podcast</a>, a big theme in the trial’s final days was <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/13/who-trusts-sam-altman/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">whether OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is trustworthy</a> — for example, Musk’s attorney Steve Molo grilled Altman about whether statements he’d made during congressional testimony were truthful.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Kirsten noted that Musk has <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/06/musks-1t-pay-package-is-full-of-watered-down-versions-of-his-own-broken-promises/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">made plenty of misleading statements of his own</a> and that trust isn’t just an issue for Altman.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">“This is a fundamental question [for] a lot of tech journalists, policymakers, and more and more consumers, about all the AI labs,” she said. “It’s really come down to trust, because we don’t have the insight, necessarily — these are all privately held companies; there’s a lot behind the veil still.”</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Keep reading for a preview of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Anthony Ha:</strong> [The end of the trial] led to this really provocative headline from one of our writers, Tim Fernholz, [that] just says, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/13/who-trusts-sam-altman/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“Who trusts Sam Altman?”</a> Does anyone want to take a stab at answering this? </p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Kirsten Korosec:</strong> Yeah, Anthony, I’m going to throw it right back to you. Do you trust Sam Altman? </p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Anthony:</strong> It’s an interesting question because it feels like something that’s kind of a wild question to discuss in a journalistic context, but actually that’s the core of the trial, in a lot of ways. </p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Sean O’Kane:</strong> That’s not a yes.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Anthony:</strong> And it actually seems to be [at the] core of understanding so much of what’s happened at OpenAI, especially this big executive power struggle that they now call The Blip.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">It just seems like a lot of people who’ve worked with Altman <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/01/sam-altman-biographer-keach-hagey-explains-why-the-openai-ceo-was-born-for-this-moment/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">don’t trust him</a>. And he’s acknowledged this a little bit, because he’ll talk about the fact that <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/11/sam-altman-responds-to-incendiary-new-yorker-article-after-attack-on-his-home/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">he recognizes he’s been conflict averse</a>, telling people what they want to hear, and he’s trying to work on that.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">I mean, it sounds plausible, and I can understand how that can lead to misunderstandings in some situations. [But] I’m also a very conflict-averse person and I’d like to think that if any of this stuff went to trial, that people would not be asking, “Is Anthony Ha trustworthy?”</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Sean:</strong> Still not a yes! </p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Kirsten:</strong> I think that people would say that you are trustworthy. I will say that question, while provocative, doesn’t just encapsulate what this trial was about. I would zoom out even more and say this is a fundamental question [for] a lot of tech journalists, policymakers, and more and more consumers, about all the AI labs. It’s really come down to trust, because we don’t have the insight, necessarily — these are all privately held companies; there’s a lot behind the veil still.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Maybe when they all IPO, we can get a peek, but it is fundamentally about trust and misuse, and do we believe the intent? And what I would throw back is, sometimes the intent can be worthy, noble, and still misused. It can still end up as a bit of a s— show. I think it’s more than who trusts Sam Altman — although that was very interesting in this trial — but more of that bigger question that we can apply to the entire industry. </p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Sean:</strong> I’ll say it: I don’t trust him. But you know, I don’t trust most people, so I guess that’s just the baseline. </p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">We’ll see where this goes. The trial wraps up today. I’ve been very curious to hear how the jury decides this all. I think at the start of this, a big motivator of this was Elon Musk trying to sling mud at a perceived rival and someone who he feels slighted him. And I don’t know if we know enough yet to say that that was completely accomplished, and whether or not he has a shot at winning. But I think all these people came out of this looking a little bit worse. </p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Anthony:</strong> And just to get specific, why this is coming up this week is that [Altman] was on the stand and he was basically getting grilled about some statements he’s made in the past, in testimony to [Congress], basically saying he didn’t have any equity in OpenAI. And that is not true because he had a stake through Y Combinator, which he used to run. And tried to brush that off by saying, “I assume that everybody understands what it means to be a passive investor in a VC fund.” And I think [Elon Musk’s] lawyer, somewhat fairly, said “Really? You think the congressman who was interviewing you knew that?”</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><strong>Kirsten:</strong> Yeah, I mean, he was playing the whole semantics game. What I thought was so interesting about [this] is the style of how Sam Altman answered questions [compared to] Elon Musk on the stand. </p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">So Elon Musk, in many, many, many scenarios and many instances, we can point to the fact that he put something out on Twitter that was a lie or a bit of a fib, and on the stand corrected the record. So there’s a history of, I would say, non-truthfulness-slash-lying, blatant or otherwise, in Elon Musk’s world, but how he treated it was incredibly combative and very different than Altman who really took this [attitude of], “I’m working on it,” and tried to seem sort of affable and I don’t know if it’ll work for him.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Because it really comes down to the core facts, and hopefully that’s what the jury pays attention to. But I thought that that was really interesting — both being untruthful, but how they dealt with it was very different.</p> Loading the player…
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