He may just be trying to prove a point for the sake of his case, in which he is hoping to get OpenAI to cough up hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to him personally. But Elon Musk has reportedly been harping on AI doomsday scenarios in his federal court testimony.

As you may know, Elon Musk has taken OpenAI and its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman to court over what he says is a breach of its original nonprofit mission. And he seems to be airing the grievance that he put up $38 million in seed money/donated cash nearly a decade ago, only to have OpenAI go on to be wildly successful without him at all involved.

(If you're seeking more background on this case, see here, and here.)

Elon Musk himself has been on the stand the past several days, after opening arguments were made Tuesday. And as the Chronicle reports from the federal courthouse in Oakland, he made some potentially damning admissions under cross-examination on Thursday.

For one, Musk seemingly admitted that xAI's Grok chatbot and the basis of its AI model were "distilled" from via OpenAI, or trained via ChatGPT's software — which OpenAI suggests was a violation of its own terms of service.

Also, the trial has brought to light some kiss-assy texts from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, with whom he once seemed to be in some kind of toxic-masculine feud involving an MMA challenge. As the Chronicle reports, OpenAI's attorneys trotted out a text from Zuckerberg from December 2024 in which he told Musk that someone at Meta had "leaked" a letter to the attorney general of California in support of his recently lawsuit against OpenAI — evidence that he and another tech titan shared a mutual grievance.

More grossly, in February 2025, right after Trump's inauguration and Musk's brief elevation into the upper echelons of government, Zuckerberg sent him a text saying, "Looks like DOGE is making progress. I’ve got our teams on alert to take down content doxxing or threatening the people on your team. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help."

Afterward, Musk apparently texted Zuck back to see if he was interested in "bidding up the OpenAI IP" or intellectual property, "with me and some others?" This was shortly before Musk made his seemingly fascetious bid to buy OpenAI last year for $97.4 billion.

As CNN reports, OpenAI's lead counsel William Savitt presented Musk with an email from 2018 that included a term sheet for a proposed corporate structure, as OpenAI sought to raise $10 billion. Musk replied that he "did not read the fine print" of the document at the time, and Savitt replied, "It's a four-page document."

The judge in the case, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers — the same judge who is overseeing the Sheng Thao corruption trial — apparently had to scold Musk for dwelling on AI doomsday scenarios, including a reference to a "Terminator" scenario involving humanoids like his Optimus Prime robots.

Per the Chronicle, Rogers told Musk after one of these mentions of threats to all humanity that this didn't have to do with a trial about OpenAI's nonprofit mission. "They got it. It’s enough," she reportedly said, referring to the jury.

On Wednesday, Savitt reportedly butted heads with Musk and expressed frustration to Judge Rogers, per the New York Times, at one point mentioning "how difficult it is to get concise answers out of the witness," referring to Musk.

"That is the challenge you have," Rogers replied.

The civil case will ultimately be decided by Rogers, with input from the jury. Next up on the stand will be Greg Brockman from OpenAI, with Altman expected to testify as well, and UC Berkeley professor Stuart Russell, an expert in AI safety.

Previously: Jury Selection Begins In Trial Pitting Elon Musk Against OpenAI

Top image: Elon Musk arrives to court at the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building on April 30, 2026 in Oakland, California. Elon Musk invested in OpenAI early on believing it would be a non-profit, but is now suing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman for allegedly deceiving him by developing OpenAI into a for-profit company. (Photo by Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images)