Sutskever Defends Role in Altman’s Ouster: ‘I Didn’t Want OpenAI Destroyed’

Elon Musk’s high-stakes legal battle against OpenAI and Microsoft entered its final phase on Monday, featuring testimony from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, and current OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor. The courtroom drama highlighted deep fractures within the AI giant and raised critical questions about leadership, governance, and the future of artificial general intelligence.

Sutskever, who once helped orchestrate Sam Altman’s abrupt ouster in November 2023, revealed he holds a stake in OpenAI’s $850-billion for-profit arm now valued at roughly $7 billion. That makes him one of the largest known individual shareholders in the company. Earlier in the trial, OpenAI president Greg Brockman disclosed for the first time that he owns around $30 billion worth of OpenAI shares. Brockman and Sutskever were once described as “joined at the hip,” but their partnership fractured after Sutskever gathered evidence of Altman’s alleged deception and helped draft a memo urging his removal. Despite attempts to mend ties, Sutskever has remained estranged from both Brockman and Altman, according to an OpenAI attorney.

Arriving in a dress shirt and slacks,the first male witness to testify without a suit jacket,Sutskever seemed visibly disheartened by his departure from the company he helped build. “I felt a great deal of ownership of OpenAI,” he said. “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 left OpenAI in 2024 to form a competing AI lab.

Sutskever’s testimony reinforced Musk’s argument that Altman is unfit to lead an organization on the verge of creating artificial general intelligence. Sutskever noted that the superalignment team he led, which focused on the safety of future AI models, was doing the most critical long-term work at OpenAI. That team was disbanded in May 2024, shortly after Sutskever’s exit.

However, Sutskever also supported OpenAI’s defense that Musk never secured any special promises when he initially funded the nonprofit. Musk claims Altman and Brockman violated such commitments by pursuing a lucrative for-profit structure,the core of his lawsuit. Sutskever explained that building a computer as powerful as the human brain required “a lot of dollars,” and while donations had “reasonable success,” transitioning to a for-profit model was the consensus path forward. “I would describe it as the difference between an ant and a cat,” he said, comparing the computing power gains. “If there’s no funding, there is no big computer.”

Sutskever, a renowned AI scientist who paints in his spare time, testified for about an hour, rarely making eye contact. Musk’s legal team had tried to treat him as a hostile witness due to his financial stake, but US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers allowed both sides extra latitude in questioning, citing Sutskever’s “unique position” in the case.

Much of Monday’s testimony revisited the chaotic events of Altman’s firing and reinstatement. Nadella called Sutskever and the board’s handling of Altman’s ouster “amateur city,” adding he “never got clarity” on the lack of candor that prompted the decision. Nadella also revealed that he and colleagues discussed 14 potential board members if Altman returned, including at least two Microsoft vetoed and one who later joined. He described Microsoft’s input as suggestions.

Sutskever defended his support for firing Altman, arguing that “an environment where executives don’t have the correct information” is not “conducive to reach any grand goal.” But he criticized the board for rushing the process, lacking experience, and accepting “legal advice that wasn’t very good.”

In his lawsuit, Musk accuses Microsoft of helping turn OpenAI into a profit-driven machine beyond his original intent. Nadella testified that Microsoft initially supported OpenAI with discounted cloud computing but could no longer afford to once “the bill started going up.” A for-profit structure, allowing Microsoft to invest for potential returns, was more palatable. But as costs soared, Microsoft demanded more. “We will lose 4 bil next year!!!” Nadella wrote in a 2022 email, calling for a new agreement to secure AI “know-how” from the startup, which he repeatedly spelled as “Open AI.”