OpenAI co-founder and President Greg Brockman testified that his stake in the startup is now worth almost $30 billion, prompting an attorney for Elon Musk to ask why he had not donated the bulk of his earnings to the ChatGPT maker’s nonprofit foundation.

After Brockman disclosed his stake in OpenAI — which makes him one of the largest individual shareholders in the company — attorney Steven Molo grilled him over a 2017 entry in his personal journal in which he wrote: “Financially, what will take me to $1B?”

The private notes have been presented by Musk’s legal team as key evidence that Brockman and OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman were more focused on enriching themselves than developing artificial intelligence to benefit humanity.

“Rather than consider how to develop funding for the nonprofit, which needed it, you were worried about what it would take to get you to $1 billion?” Molo asked.

Brockman told the jury he disagreed with Molo’s characterization of the journal entry. He said at that point, OpenAI’s co-founders recognized they needed to create a for-profit entity to support the mission, but he was weighing several options.

“There was a fork in the road,” Brockman said. “Do we accept Elon’s terms? Or do we reject the terms, he quits to create his own, and then we create our own? My thought process was, ‘If I can reach a billion dollars, I feel I’m good.’ I wouldn’t care about A vs. B.”

Molo seized on Brockman’s answer.

“You said you were ‘good’ with a billion,” Molo said. “Why didn’t you take the $29 billion and donate it to the nonprofit that you had a fiduciary duty to, for the good of humanity? Why didn’t you do that?”

Brockman said the accomplishments of OpenAI and the value of the nonprofit have been built by “blood, sweat and tears” since Musk left the company. He also said his musing about his path to $1 billion was more a commentary on which choice he would “actually be happy with.”

“Which one will I feel like, ‘Man, this is something I’m enthusiastic to get out of bed and actually do the work every single day,’” Brockman said.

“To be clear, it takes $30 billion to get you out of bed in the morning, but a billion dollars doesn’t get you out of bed in the morning?” Molo asked.

“That is not what I’m saying,” Brockman replied.

Molo repeated his question about donating the $29 billion multiple times. Amid objections to the questions from lawyers for OpenAI, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers said Brockman “hasn’t really answered the question.”

The stakes at the trial in federal court in Oakland, California, are high for OpenAI. If Musk convinces the jury and judge that OpenAI’s leaders abandoned its nonprofit roots to capitalize on the project for their own benefit, he’s asking for remedies that could upend the company.

Not only is Musk seeking tens of billions of dollar in damages, he’s also pushing for the removal of Altman and Brockman from their leadership roles and the unwinding of the ChatGPT maker’s for-profit conversion that was completed in October.

OpenAI has argued that Musk’s lawsuit is primarily an attempt to undermine a top competitor to his own AI company, xAI. The company has also contended that Musk himself was a proponent of restructuring OpenAI as a for-profit entity before he left the board in 2018.

Altman has repeatedly said he does not own equity in OpenAI.

Asked by Musk’s attorney if his sizable stake breaches his duty to humanity, Brockman said no and stressed that the firm has “created the most well-resourced nonprofit in history.

OpenAI said Monday that its nonprofit arm’s stake in the company is now worth about $200 billion. After OpenAI completed its for-profit restructure in October, the company said the nonprofit foundation had received a 26% equity stake, then valued at roughly $130 billion.

The case is Musk v. Altman, 4:24-cv-04722, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (Oakland).

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