AI NewsAt his OpenAI trial, Musk relitigates an old friendship
At his OpenAI trial, Musk relitigates an old friendship
6:17 AM IST · April 29, 2026

Among the most interesting parts of Elon Muskâs testimony Tuesday in his lawsuit against OpenAI wasnât the charity he claims was stolen from him (we all knewthat was coming). It was about an old friend. Musk testified that one of his core motivations for co-founding OpenAI was a falling out with Googleâs Larry Page over AI safety â specifically, a conversation in which Musk raised the prospect of AI wiping out humanity and Page shrugged it off as âfine,â so long as AI itself survived. Page called Musk a âspeciestâ for being âpro human.â Musk called the attitude âinsane.â Thatâs mostly notable given how close the two once were. Fortune included them on its 2016 list of secretly best-friend business leaders; Musk was so comfortable with Page that he regularly crashed at his Palo Alto home. Page once told Charlie Rose that heâd rathergive his money to Muskthan to charity. The friendship didnât survive OpenAI. When Musk recruited Google AI star Ilya Sutskever to help launch the company in 2015, Page felt personally betrayed and cut off contact. Itâs a story Musk has told before â including to author Walter Isaacson for his bestselling biography of Musk â but Tuesday was the first time he said it under oath. Page hasnât commented, and itâs worth remembering everything that Musk said was in service of a lawsuit. Still, as recently as 2023 he told tech podcaster Lex Fridman he wanted to patch things up: âWe were friends for a very long time.â
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