Ilya Sutskever testified Monday in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, telling the court he voted to remove Sam Altman from OpenAI’s leadership. [1, 2]
Sutskever said he feared OpenAI could be destroyed or collapse without Altman’s return. He also said he avoided looking at the internet after Altman was fired. [1, 2]
In his testimony, Sutskever said he felt a deep personal stake in the company. “I felt a great deal of ownership of OpenAI. I felt like I put my life into it, and I simply cared for it, and I didn’t want it to be destroyed,” he said. [1]
He also said he helped collect evidence about Altman and assisted in drafting a memo to the board. Sutskever said OpenAI needed a lot of money to build a computer as big as the human brain and that becoming for-profit was the consensus. He added that Musk never negotiated any special promises when funding the OpenAI nonprofit. [1]
Sutskever’s OpenAI ownership stake in the for-profit arm is worth about $7 billion, according to the testimony. He also said he turned down a $6 million annual compensation offer from Google. [1, 2]
The testimony revisited the 2023 crisis at OpenAI, when Altman was briefly removed as chief executive before being reinstated after a backlash from employees and investors. Sutskever left OpenAI in 2024 and later formed Safe Superintelligence Inc. [1, 2]
OpenAI’s superalignment team was disbanded in May 2024 shortly after Sutskever left. The trial is expected to continue as the court weighs Musk’s claims against OpenAI and Microsoft. [1]
