Musk Trial Exposes Tesla Takeover Plot; Brockman Stake at $30B

The Musk v. OpenAI trial is producing its most consequential testimony yet, with a former board member alleging Musk wanted Tesla to effectively take over the company he co-founded, and OpenAI President Greg Brockman placing a staggering personal valuation on his own equity stake.

Key points

• Former OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis testified that Elon Musk wanted Tesla to take over OpenAI, according to France 24 reporting from May 7.
• Zilis, who is romantically involved with Musk, took the stand in week two of the trial pitting Musk against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
• OpenAI President Greg Brockman testified that his personal equity stake in the company is worth nearly $30 billion, per Seeking Alpha.
• Separately, OpenAI raised over $4 billion for a business AI joint venture, backed by 19 investors.
• The Brockman valuation figure, if taken at face value, implies a total company valuation well above OpenAI’s last reported funding round.

What did Musk actually want with OpenAI?

The most striking claim from week two of the trial is that Musk’s ambitions went beyond simply steering OpenAI’s mission. According to Zilis’s testimony, Musk wanted Tesla to absorb the organization outright. That framing matters for the lawsuit’s core question: whether Musk was acting as a concerned founder protecting a nonprofit mission, or as an executive pursuing a corporate acquisition that fell through.

Zilis occupies an unusual position in this proceeding. She is a former OpenAI board member, a current Neuralink executive, and the mother of Musk’s children. Her credibility will almost certainly be contested by both sides. The sources available do not detail what corroborating documents, if any, were introduced alongside her testimony, so the full evidentiary weight of her account remains unclear at this stage.

What the testimony does accomplish, regardless of how the jury weighs it, is broadening the picture of Musk’s early relationship with OpenAI from co-founder and donor to someone who allegedly saw the organization as a potential corporate asset. That framing aligns with arguments OpenAI’s legal team has been making since the lawsuit was filed.

What does Brockman’s $30B stake tell us about OpenAI’s implied valuation?

Greg Brockman’s testimony that his equity is worth nearly $30 billion is the most concrete valuation signal to emerge from the trial so far. Brockman is a co-founder and president, but his ownership percentage has not been publicly confirmed. Even a modest equity stake, say in the low single-digit percent range, would imply a total company valuation somewhere between $500 billion and $1 trillion to reach a $30 billion personal figure.

That range sits well above OpenAI’s $157 billion post-money valuation from its October 2024 funding round, and above the $300 billion figure reported in connection with its early 2025 SoftBank-led raise. Either Brockman holds a larger-than-expected stake, or he is marking his equity to a significantly higher current valuation, or both. The source does not clarify which assumptions underlie his number.

For investors watching OpenAI’s eventual path to a public offering, a $30 billion single-stake claim is worth tracking carefully. It suggests insiders may be pricing the company considerably higher than the last disclosed round, though testimony given in a courtroom under specific legal framing should not be treated as an official valuation disclosure.

The $4B joint venture and what it signals for enterprise strategy

Somewhat lost in the trial coverage is a meaningful financing milestone. OpenAI closed more than $4 billion for a business-focused AI joint venture, drawing from 19 separate investors. The structure, a dedicated vehicle rather than a direct equity round, is consistent with OpenAI’s recent pattern of using targeted funding pools to expand into specific verticals without diluting its core cap table further.

The joint venture appears aimed at accelerating enterprise adoption, a market where OpenAI competes directly with Microsoft’s Azure-integrated offerings, Google’s Workspace AI tools, and Anthropic, which separately announced its own private equity partnerships around the same time. Nineteen investors in a single vehicle is a broad syndicate, suggesting strong institutional appetite even as the trial creates headline uncertainty.

The bigger picture

This week’s news reinforces two parallel storylines that will define OpenAI’s trajectory through the rest of 2026. The trial is generating testimony that reframes the company’s founding history in ways that could affect public perception, regulatory scrutiny, and ultimately the governance disclosures required for any IPO filing. At the same time, the company continues to raise capital and expand its enterprise footprint at a pace that suggests internal confidence in the business regardless of courtroom outcomes.

Nothing in this update constitutes investment advice.