Musk Revisits Break With Larry Page During OpenAI Trial

In court testimony, Elon Musk said a disagreement with Google co‑founder Larry Page over the dangers posed by advanced AI helped push him to co‑found OpenAI, and he revived the story of how a friendship unraveled after that split.

Musk told the judge and jurors that a conversation with Page about whether artificial intelligence could threaten humanity was a turning point. He said Page treated the threat as acceptable so long as an AI system endured, a reaction Musk interpreted as indifference to human survival. That exchange, Musk testified, helped convince him to join others in creating an organization focused on safer, more publicly oriented AI development.

The anecdote stood out because the two entrepreneurs had once been close. In the mid‑2010s they were often linked in profiles of tight business friendships; Musk frequently stayed at Page’s Palo Alto home, and Page had publicly expressed strong confidence in Musk’s ability to manage funds and projects. Those ties frayed after Musk recruited Ilya Sutskever, then at Google, to help launch OpenAI in 2015. Musk says Page took that move personally and cut off contact.

Musk has recounted versions of the dispute before—most prominently in his biography and in interviews—but Tuesday marked the first time he described it under oath. Page has not answered requests for comment. And while Musk framed the story as part of why he stepped into the AI field, legal observers note that he was also using the platform to support his claims in an ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI over his alleged ouster from a charitable initiative linked to the organization.

A scholar who tracks Silicon Valley rivalries said personal relationships often shape how technology companies form and fracture, and that courtroom retellings can be as much about persuasion as about fact. Still, the exchange offered a rare, public look at how a disagreement over risk and priorities can turn longtime allies into estranged figures in tech’s inner circles.