Court files from Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI revealed that Greg Brockman, one of its co-founders, wanted to get the company out from the Tesla founder since 2017. According to a document from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, posted on X, case discovery revealed that Brockman didn’t just want to remove Musk from OpenAI, but also tried to convert it into a for-profit company without him. In a publicly-posted rebuttal of some aspects of the journal, OpenAI has acknowledged that the journal is real. However, the firm's comments don't address the following excerpts.
“This is the only chance we have to get out from Elon. Is he the ‘glorious leader’ that I would pick? We truly have a chance to make this happen. Financially, what would take me to $1B?” Brockman wrote in his personal files revealed during the lawsuit. “Accepting Elon’s terms nukes two things: our ability to choose (though maybe we could overrule him) and the economics.”
pic.twitter.com/D6BV302t4LJanuary 16, 2026
Expand the above tweet to see the court documents. The supposed revelation appears in documents related to Musk’s lawsuit seeking to stop OpenAI’s move to become a for-profit company. Elon Musk first sued OpenAI in early 2024 in a California state court, alleging that its plan to become a for-profit entity breaches its founding agreement. However, he dropped the case one day before hearings were supposed to start, only to refile the case a few months later — but this time at a federal court.
Relations between the two camps have been testy ever since the OpenAI founders wanted to make the firm for-profit. This has gotten to the point that when Altman called out Tesla for not being contactable via its reservations@tesla.com email address on X, Musk replied with, “You stole a non-profit.” Naturally, we will have to wait for court proceedings and the jury’s decision to determine if this is true.
According to the court files, “Brockman wrote after the meeting [with Musk to reaffirm OpenAI’s commitment to the non-profit structure] that the ‘conclusion is we truly want the b-corp. Honestly, we also want to get back to work, but it’s super clear how we get there.’ He also continued, ‘cannot say that we are committed to the non-profit, don’t want to say that we’re committed, if, three months later, we’re doing B-Corp, then it was a lie.” The document also revealed that Brockman did not like the situation and the “the true answer is that we want [Musk] out.”
With the way things are shaping up, this case seems set to be an epic court fight between two AI tech bros, with billions of dollars at stake. Elon Musk is reportedly seeking damages ranging from $79 billion to $134 billion, as well as an unspecified punitive penalty.
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