And so naturally, there’s a lot of internal tech gossip coming to light. Questions about Elon’s “rhino ket” use won’t make it into the trial… but it’s in news stories because it showed up in the docket. We got excerpts from OpenAI President Greg “What will take me to $1B?” Brockman’s diary. Mark Zuckerberg, not involved in the litigation at all, has had several embarrassing texts made public, like allegedly telling Musk that he had Meta teams “on alert to take down content doxxing or threatening the people on your [DOGE] team,” weeks after claiming he refuses to moderate based on government requests. Also, Musk thinks Jeff Bezos “is a bit of a tool.”

The fact that the case got to trial at all is a win for Musk, who seems to be trying to damage OpenAI’s reputation however he can — from lawsuits to general shit-talking to, apparently, a homophobic dossier on Sam Altman that’s getting passed around Silicon Valley by “Musk intermediaries.” Musk v. Altman “only ended up at trial because Elon Musk can pay his attorneys to argue a losing case,” said Sam Brunson, a professor of law at Loyola University of Chicago. “If I were doing this on contingency, I’d assume I wouldn’t be getting paid.”

Over the next few weeks, high-profile AI executives, such as Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella and CTO Kevin Scott, will likely testify. Former OpenAI executives, such as cofounder Ilya Sutskever and Mira Murati, former CTO, may be called. The former board members involved in Altman’s temporary 2023 ouster from his CEO role may also testify.

Lawsuits appear to be Musk’s preferred alternative to therapy. Musk has sued perceived adversaries of his X social media platform, including a suit against a nonprofit that was dismissed as “baseless” and another against the firm that successfully made him follow through on his agreement to buy Twitter. Tesla and SpaceX are hotbeds of litigation. Let’s not go over the numerous family law matters that Musk is involved in due to his 14 known children.