Satya Nadella delivered blistering testimony in court on Monday, describing the 2023 attempt by OpenAI’s board to remove chief executive Sam Altman as “amateur city,” during a closely watched legal battle involving billionaire Elon Musk. The comments came as Nadella testified in Musk’s lawsuit accusing OpenAI and Microsoft of abandoning the nonprofit mission on which the AI lab was founded and transforming it into a profit-driven corporate powerhouse.
According to reporting by the Financial Times, Nadella told the court he never received a clear explanation from OpenAI’s board regarding why Altman had been abruptly fired in November 2023 before being reinstated only days later after a revolt by employees and investors. The board had originally claimed Altman was removed because he was “not consistently candid,” a justification Nadella acknowledged could warrant dismissing a chief executive. However, he said repeated requests for details produced no meaningful answers.
The courtroom clash has revived scrutiny surrounding Altman’s leadership and the chaotic governance crisis that nearly tore apart OpenAI at a critical moment in the global artificial intelligence race. Musk, one of OpenAI’s original backers before leaving the company in 2018, has aggressively used the controversy to challenge Altman’s credibility, referring to him publicly as “Swindly Sam” while accusing the company of betraying its founding principles.
The trial carries enormous financial stakes. Musk argues that Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest investor, helped transform the organization from a nonprofit research institution into a highly commercialized enterprise worth an estimated $852 billion. A legal victory for Musk could severely disrupt OpenAI’s plans for a future public offering and reshape the ownership structure of one of the world’s most influential AI companies.
Former OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever also testified during the proceedings, criticizing the board’s handling of the attempted coup. Sutskever described the process as rushed and said the directors involved lacked experience and received poor legal advice. He later reversed his support for Altman’s removal and helped orchestrate his return before eventually departing OpenAI in 2024. Sutskever revealed during testimony that his personal stake in the company is now worth approximately $7 billion.
The court proceedings have also exposed Microsoft’s growing anxiety over its dependence on OpenAI’s technology. Internal emails presented during the trial showed Nadella privately warning executives in 2022 that he feared Microsoft could become strategically subordinate to OpenAI, comparing the relationship to the historic partnership in which IBM helped create the conditions for Microsoft’s rise decades earlier.
“I don’t want to be IBM and OpenAI to be Microsoft,” Nadella wrote in one internal message discussing the company’s expanding investment in AI. In another email to Microsoft finance chief Amy Hood, he expressed concern that OpenAI controlled most of the critical intellectual property while Microsoft remained “a very thin layer on top of Nvidia.” Nadella warned that investing billions without maintaining strategic control “made no sense.”
The testimony highlighted how dramatically the relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI evolved over the years. Nadella admitted that Microsoft initially treated its support for OpenAI almost like a charitable effort by providing heavily discounted cloud computing services. But as OpenAI’s computing costs skyrocketed, Microsoft’s approach shifted toward aggressive commercial investment. During cross-examination, Nadella agreed with an attorney’s characterization that the company eventually moved from “charity” to business.
Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019, followed by another $2 billion in 2021 and a further $10 billion in 2023. Those investments helped transform OpenAI from a small research organization into one of the most powerful and valuable companies in the technology industry. Microsoft now owns roughly 27% of OpenAI, a stake estimated to be worth more than $200 billion.
When questioned about whether the investment had ultimately benefited Microsoft, Nadella responded bluntly: “Because we were the only ones who took the risk.”