Satya Nadella Testifies in Musk v. Altman Trial: No Contact from Musk, 'Amateur City' Board

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took the stand in the Musk v. Altman federal trial in Oakland, California, delivering hours of testimony that pushed back on Elon Musk's central claims while offering a candid, sometimes biting assessment of OpenAI's chaotic 2023 boardroom drama. Nadella testified that Musk never once reached out to him with concerns that Microsoft's multibillion-dollar investments in OpenAI violated any special terms or charitable commitments — directly undercutting Musk's argument that the $10 billion 2023 investment was a smoking-gun moment that prompted him to open a legal investigation into the company.

Nadella was unapologetic about Microsoft's stake in OpenAI, saying he was 'very proud' the company bet on the then-obscure lab when no one else would. He drew a sharp distinction between investment and donation, stating that the partnership always had a clear commercial dimension — Microsoft provided steep discounts on computing resources and expected marketing benefits in return. A video deposition from Microsoft corporate development executive Michael Wetter quantified the payoff: the company has recognized roughly $9.5 billion in revenue through the OpenAI partnership to date.

On the November 2023 firing of Sam Altman, Nadella was characteristically direct. He said he was 'pretty surprised' by the board's move and described their explanation — that Altman had not been 'consistently candid' — as wholly inadequate given that Altman ran a company in which Microsoft held a massive stake. When board members offered no specifics beyond that vague language, Nadella said he suspected jealousy and poor communication were at play, and he summed up the whole episode with a phrase that is likely to dominate headlines: 'It was sort of amateur city, as far as I'm concerned.' He also denied ever demanding Altman's reinstatement, pushing back against a former OpenAI director's recollection that he had pushed to restore the prior status quo.

Court proceedings also revealed a trove of internal Microsoft communications. Text messages between Nadella and Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott showed the two men discussing potential OpenAI board candidates including Coinbase COO Emilie Choi, former LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, and former Alphabet director Diane Greene — whom Nadella vetoed due to her Google ties. An email Nadella sent in 2022 surfaced a revealing analogy: 'I don't want to be IBM and OpenAI to be Microsoft,' a nod to the fateful 1980 DOS licensing deal that allowed Microsoft to eclipse IBM. The comparison landed with extra weight given that Microsoft's market cap closed Monday at $3 trillion versus IBM's $210 billion.

After Nadella stepped down, former OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever testified that Google had offered him up to $6 million a year to prevent him from joining OpenAI — and that he ultimately raised concerns about Altman's behavior to the board because he felt deep ownership over the startup and feared it would be 'destroyed.' OpenAI board chairman Bret Taylor also took the stand, describing Altman's ouster as a 'dire' period, though his testimony was not completed by day's end. Sam Altman himself is scheduled to testify Tuesday.