ToplineOpenAI cofounder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever confirmed Monday a $7 billion stake in OpenAI during his testimony for the high-stakes trial between Elon Musk and the ChatGPT maker, marking the second newly revealed OpenAI billionaire after president Greg Brockman testified a near $30 billion stake last week. OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA - OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever arrives to court at the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building on May 11, 2026 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images)Getty ImagesKey FactsSutskever took the stand Monday following testimony from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, affirming that his ownership stake in OpenAI is worth as much as $7 billion dollars today. Sutskever, who worked as a research scientist at Google for two years, testified Google offered him $6 million a year to stay at the company instead of leaving to found OpenAI—a "staggering amount of money" to him at the time, he said. On questions about the board’s firing of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Sutskever acknowledged that he had been thinking about the issues surrounding Altman for at least a year leading up to the firing, He testified that he told fellow members of the board of OpenAI that Altman exhibited a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs and pitting his execs against one another. Eventually, Sutskeer signed a petition with OpenAI employees to reinstate Altman because of what he called a “Hail Mary” to save the company from being “destroyed” following the events of the firing—including Microsoft’s attempt to hire Altman and Brockman. Asked about whether he ever made a promise to Musk that OpenAI would remain a nonprofit, Sutskever testified that he “made no such promise,” adding that: "The mission of OpenAI is larger than its nonprofit or for-profit structure." Sutskever said he also opposed Musk's proposal to merge OpenAI with Tesla in the company's early days and didn’t agree with Musk’s proposed 62.5% stake in OpenAI, calling the proposal “aggressive because I knew that Mr. Musk had many other obligations and many other companies he was running.” In May 2024, Sutskver left OpenAI to found AI research lab Safe Superintelligence, which is worth $32 billion after raising $3 billion to date as of April.Key BackgroundSutskever, who immigrated from Russia to Israel as a child and later to Canada, earned his PhD in computer science at University of Toronto before joining Google as a research scientist. He went on to become a cofounder and chief scientist at OpenAI, where he oversaw the research breakthroughs that led to ChatGPT. In November 2023, he was one of the OpenAI board members who voted to oust CEO Sam Altman. Altman was reinstated within a week, and Sutskever stepped down from the board. Brockman testified last week that he and Sutskever denied Musk a majority stake in OpenAI during a meeting in 2017, recalling that Musk was so angry that he thought Musk would become physically aggressive. Forbes ValuationSutskever joins Brockman as the second OpenAI billionaire to be revealed during the trial. Brockman testified his nearly $30 billion stake in the ChatGPT last week. Forbes estimates Altman’s net worth is around $3.5 billion. As of Monday, Musk, the richest man in the world, has a $827 billion fortune. TangentSutskever is part of the "OpenAI mafia"–former OpenAI employees that have left to found billion dollar companies. Dario and Daniela Amodei left the ChatGPT maker in 2021 to found Anthropic, which reportedly is raising funds at a valuation of $1 trillion—making it OpenAI's most direct rival and. Former chief technology officer Mira Murati, who testified in the trial last week, launched Thinking Machines Lab, which closed a staggering $2 billion seed round last June at roughly a $12 billion valuation, with a team that's two-thirds OpenAI alumni including cofounder John Schulman and former research director Barret Zoph. Aravind Srinivas, an OpenAI research scientist until 2022, co-founded Perplexity, which was last valued at $20 billion. Liam Fedus, OpenAI's former vice president of research, left in March 2025 to launch Periodic Labs, which is reportedly raising capital at a $7 billion valuation.