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In a United States court, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has rejected claims from fellow tech mogul Elon Musk that he betrayed the artificial intelligence company’s original vision.

Tuesday marked the start of Altman’s testimony in a contentious trial unfolding in Oakland, California, between some of tech’s richest and most powerful titans.

Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, has sued Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman on the basis that they “stole a charity” by shifting its purpose.

He alleged that OpenAI’s leader persuaded him to invest $38bn, based on a goal of improving humanity, only to see the company pivot to a for-profit venture in 2019.

On the witness stand on Tuesday, Altman instead framed Musk as a competitor obsessed with exercising control over OpenAI.

“It does not fit with my conception of the words ‘stealing a charity’ to look at what has actually happened here,” Altman told the court.

The two men have long had an acrimonious relationship, driven in part by differing views about artificial intelligence.

Musk — a self-described free speech “absolutist” — currently runs his own AI chatbot, Grok, which has been accused of perpetuating right-wing conspiracy theories and offensive materials.

He is seeking $150bn in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, one of its principal investors.

Altman’s testimony comes more than two weeks into the trial, which has seen him and Musk square off against each other.

In his testimony, Altman argued that Musk knew of the plans to develop OpenAI into a for-profit enterprise when he invested, and he asserted that Musk even petitioned to have a majority stake in the company.

“An early number that Mr Musk threw out was that he should have 90 percent of the equity to start,” Altman told the jury. “It then softened, but it always was a majority.”

The outcome of the trial could determine the future of OpenAI, its leadership, and products like ChatGPT. As part of his lawsuit, Musk is pushing for the removal of Altman and Brockman.

The trial comes as OpenAI prepares for a potential initial public offering that could see it valued at $1 trillion, a historically large sum.

During earlier testimony, Musk portrayed Altman as a liar who could not be trusted with the development of the technology.

“If you have someone who is not trustworthy in charge of AI, I think that’s a very big danger for the whole world,” Musk said.

Musk’s lawyer, Steven Molo, also sought to undermine Altman’s reliability during questioning on Tuesday.

“Have you misled people when you do business?” Molo asked Altman.

“I do not think so,” Altman replied.

Altman, meanwhile, sought to cast doubt on Musk’s leadership; Musk ultimately left OpenAI’s board in 2018 to pursue his own AI development.

“I don’t think Mr Musk understood how to run a good research lab,” Altman said. “He had demotivated some of our most key researchers.”

The US public, for its part, has been largely unconvinced by high-minded rhetoric about the transformative potential of AI.

A March 2026 poll by the Pew Research Center suggested that a majority of respondents in the US believe AI will worsen, rather than improve, the ability to think creatively, form meaningful relationships, make difficult decisions, and solve problems.

Just 10 percent of respondents said they were more excited than concerned about the increased use of AI in daily life.

But the industry has been quick to translate its substantial economic power into political influence as lawmakers consider how best to regulate the technology.

The use of AI has emerged as an election-season issue as the US midterms approach in November, and the administration of President Donald Trump has proposed a “national policy framework” for the technology to avoid a patchwork of state regulations.

The AI industry has become a driver of eye-watering investment in recent years, with the United Nations estimating that the global market could be worth $4.8 trillion by 2033.

Poll finds that Americans are concerned about impact of the war on the cost of living and sceptical of success thus far.

A new poll has found that a large majority of people in the United States believe that the decision to take military action against Iran was a mistake, as the war roils the global economy and fuels cost-of-living concerns in the US.

A Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll released on Friday shows that 61 percent of respondents believe the use of military force against Iran was a mistake, with just 36 percent saying it was the right decision.

The poll is the latest to find low levels of support for the war launched against Iran by the US and Israel in late February, which has killed thousands of people across the Middle East and sent global energy prices surging.

Asked if they had changed their behaviour due to higher gas prices, 44 percent of respondents said they had cut back on driving, and 42 percent said they had done the same for household expenses. Those figures increased to 56 percent and 59 percent for respondents making less than $50,000 per year.

Those concerns come at a time when President Donald Trump’s approval ratings have dropped to new lows, with voters expressing frustration over economic issues and the cost of living.

The war has also been depicted as a contrast with Trump’s promise to keep the country out of unnecessary foreign wars, and 46 percent of respondents said the decision to attack Iran was inconsistent with the position Trump took during his presidential campaign.

Despite relatively low casualty figures among US forces, the poll found that the war on Iran is as unpopular as the Iraq War was during a period of heightened violence in 2006 and the Vietnam War was in the early 1970s.

Asked whether US military actions against Iran have been successful thus far, 39 percent said they had been unsuccessful, while 19 percent said they had been successful. A plurality of 41 percent said it was too soon to tell.

Support for the war remains robust among members of Trump’s Republican Party, however. Nearly 80 percent of Republicans said that the decision to attack Iran was the correct one, even as they were split evenly between rating operations as successful or stating that it was too soon to tell.