GoKawiilis a reporter who writes about tech, money, and human behavior. She joined The Verge in 2014 as science editor. Previously, she was a reporter at Bloomberg.
Okay, I am not a lawyer so I only understood about half of what just happened. But I am fairly sure, given the context, that Elon Musk’s lawyers may have just fucked up big.
Jared “James Brickhouse” Birchall, Musk’s finance guy and all-around fixer, took the stand after Musk today. Most of his testimony was dull and seemed to exist primarily to get some documents read into the record, which sucks but is a normal part of sitting through trials. But at the very end of his boring testimony something interesting happened. I believe we all got a surprise, something that rarely happens in courtrooms.
The lawyer conducting his direct examination was passed a note by another member of the team, and asked Birchall what was apparently contained on the note: was he familiar with the xAI bid for OpenAI’s assets?
“Sam Altman was on both sides of the table.”
“As I recall, a lawyer we were working with had asked the attorney general of California to ensure that in their fiduciary duty, proper value was being given to the assets of the nonprofit of OpenAI,” Birchall said. In his understanding, there was a negotiation “between Sam Altman and himself on both sides of the table, the for-profit and the non-profit, attempting to discount the value of the non-profit assets. And we made that bid in an attempt to properly account for the value the foundation had, and create a market bid that would need to be considered by the attorney general.”
Here’s some lore: in February 2025, a Musk-led coalition made a $97.4 billion bid for the non-profit that controls OpenAI. The bid was submitted by Marc Toberoff, one of Musk’s lawyers in the current case. This bid happened as OpenAI was restructuring itself so that the for-profit arm could be cleared to go public. In Birchall’s testimony, that bid was made because Musk, Birchall, and others, thought Altman might undervalue the nonprofit as the company restructured itself. (I’m not really sure why that would be a problem for Musk and xAI, frankly, but whatever.)
The defense counsel objected, and Birchall’s rant was struck for lack of foundation. So we did this piece by piece to establish the foundation, ending with Birchall saying, again, “Sam Altman was on both sides of the table.”
On cross-examination, Bradley Wilson from Wachtell Lipton — OpenAI’s lawyers — picked the thread back up. Wilson asked how much of this Birchall had learned from sources other than lawyers. Birchall said he’d have a hard time being able to untangle that. After a few more exchanges, Wilson moved to strike all of Birchall’s testimony about the xAI bid on grounds that would not be discussed in front of the jury.
“You must have been very convincing. You’re not very convincing today.”
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