Elon Musk calls himself a fool for giving OpenAI $38 million that became an $800 billion company

Elon Musk and Sam Altman squared off in federal court in Oakland this week in what may be the AI industry's most consequential trial yet.

Musk is suing OpenAI to unwind its shift from a nonprofit research lab into a for-profit company. He's also pushing for the removal of Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman. Musk testified for more than seven hours over three days, according to Reuters.

"I was a fool who provided them free funding to create a startup. I gave them $38 million of essentially free funding, which they then used to create what would become an $800 billion company," Musk said, according to MIT Technology Review. He added that OpenAI was "specifically meant to ​be for a charity that does not benefit any individual person. I could've started it as a for-profit and I specifically chose not to," according to Reuters.

Musk argued that OpenAI wouldn't exist without him: "I came up with the idea, the name, recruited the key people, taught them everything I know, provided all of the initial funding," he said, according to Reuters. He also said he poached researcher Ilya Sutskever from Google, adding, "After I recruited Ilya to OpenAI, Larry Page refused to speak to me ever again."