The Courtroom Showdown Between Elon Musk and Sam Altman

The Daily

The New York Times

News, Daily News

4.3 • 107.6K Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2026

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The tech leaders have brought props to court and traded icy stares as their legal dispute reaches a denouement.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Ketrowaf.
0:04.1	This is the Daily.
0:10.6	For the last three weeks, a messy, dramatic battle has played out between two of the most powerful
0:17.1	titans of tech in the world, Elon Musk and Sam Altman. In a high-stakes lawsuit,
0:24.4	Musk is seeking to cripple one of the leaders of the AI boom, Open AI, and remove Altman as its
0:31.1	chief executive. Today, as jury deliberations in the trial begin, tech reporter Mike Isaac takes us inside the courtroom drama
0:40.7	and explains how a corporate dispute got extremely personal.
0:59.8	I'm not a... It's Monday, May 18.
1:07.9	Oh my God. I'm so sorry. Can you hear me?
1:09.6	Mike, you made it.
1:12.5	I'm sorry. I've been so harried. Thank you for dealing with it. I mean, are you hanging in? It seems like it's been a long day. I'm pretty
1:18.0	fried, man. It's been like three weeks of 12-hour days, 5 a.m. mornings. It's pretty intense.
1:24.5	Yeah, three weeks, no breaks covering the Musk Altman trial every single day.
1:28.9	I have so many questions.
1:30.9	Just tell us what that's been like.
1:32.7	What have you seen?
1:35.9	So it's downtown Oakland.
1:40.7	It's the battle of the billionaires here at the district court.
1:44.0	People show up at like 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning most days.
1:48.6	And right from the beginning,
1:50.2	this song is hot off the press.
1:52.3	It's kind of like the circus is entering town.
	...

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