Three weeks of testimony in Judge Gonzalez Rogers’s Oakland courtroom end with Musk in Beijing on Trump’s state-visit delegation and deliberations beginning Monday.
Closing arguments in Musk v. Altman wrapped on Thursday afternoon in Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’s Oakland courtroom, sending the nine-person jury home for the weekend and into deliberations that begin Monday.
Three weeks of testimony, depositions, and a parade of Silicon Valley witnesses, including Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella, and Elon Musk himself, have reduced to two competing summary readings: that Altman and Brockman “stole a charity,” as Musk’s counsel told the jury, or that Musk “didn’t get his way at OpenAI,” as the defence framed it.
Musk was not in the room for the closing. His attorney issued an apology on his behalf to the jury, citing his presence on Donald Trump’s Beijing delegation, where he sat alongside Tim Cook, Jensen Huang, and Larry Fink for the parallel state visit.
The absence at the closing of the largest civil trial in his life is the kind of detail Musk’s legal team appears to have judged less damaging than the optics of skipping a Trump-led foreign trip.The 💜 of EU techThe latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
