Mira Murati, OpenAI’s former chief technology officer, told a federal court in Oakland this week that CEO Sam Altman sowed “chaos” and fostered distrust among senior executives as the company raced to scale its artificial intelligence products. In recorded testimony played on Wednesday, Murati said Altman frequently told different things to different people and at times was deceptive, a pattern she said undermined her ability to lead.
“My concern was about Sam saying one thing to one person and completely the opposite to another person,” Murati said. She testified that Altman “was creating chaos” and that his behavior sometimes left her undermined in her role. Murati, who briefly served as interim CEO after Altman was temporarily removed by OpenAI’s board in November 2023, told jurors she nevertheless wanted Altman to remain at the company and pressed board members for a fuller explanation of his ouster.
Murati added that she feared the turmoil could lead to the company’s collapse. “OpenAI was at catastrophic risk of falling apart,” she said. Murati has since left OpenAI and co-founded her own AI startup; her testimony is part of the second week of a high‑stakes civil trial launched by Elon Musk against OpenAI and some of its leaders.
Musk, a co‑founder of OpenAI, is suing on the theory that the group improperly shifted from a nonprofit to a for‑profit structure and abandoned its charitable mission. He is seeking roughly $150 billion in damages to be paid by OpenAI and investor Microsoft to benefit the startup’s charitable arm, an outcome that could sharply curtail OpenAI’s commercial ambitions and benefit Musk’s own AI efforts at xAI, now affiliated with SpaceX.
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Earlier testimony from Musk and OpenAI President Greg Brockman has painted a picture of bitter disputes among founders and senior executives about the company’s trajectory, governance and commercialization. The proceedings have also revealed unexpected episodes: jurors heard that Musk attempted to settle with Brockman just days before the trial began and that Musk at one point told the court he felt like “a fool” for continuing to bankroll the company.
The trial, being heard in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, has drawn attention because its outcome could reshape not only OpenAI’s corporate structure but also who controls development and deployment of powerful AI systems in schools, government agencies and businesses. Murati’s testimony — focused on internal dysfunction and personal dynamics at the top — adds to a growing record of contention among the team that built ChatGPT into a global platform.
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As the case continues, jurors will weigh conflicting accounts about the early governance of OpenAI, the intentions of its founders, and whether the organization breached obligations to its original nonprofit mission when it embraced commercial investment and partnerships, most notably with Microsoft. Murati’s statements underscore that, beyond legal and financial questions, the trial is probing the interpersonal frictions that accompanied OpenAI’s rapid ascent.
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