Tech billionaire and Tesla founder Elon Musk walks through the Great Hall of the People with his son X Æ A-XII.
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Elon Musk’s lead attorney, Stephen Moro, apologized to jurors Thursday for his absence. tesla The CEO accompanied President Donald Trump in China during closing arguments in the Musk-Altman trial.
“This is something he is passionate about,” Moro assured jurors of Musk’s focus on the trial.
The federal case stems from a lawsuit Musk filed against OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, alleging that they violated their promise to keep the company nonprofit and restructured the business to unfairly enrich themselves.
NBC reported that Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers had previously placed Musk on “recall status,” meaning he would have been able to return to court to testify on short notice if necessary.
The world’s richest man testified during the first week of the trial.
Before traveling far, court witnesses typically must file a motion for travel authorization and wait for a judge to grant the motion.
A court spokeswoman said it was not known whether Musk had received permission to travel. Musk’s lawyers did not respond to requests for information about whether a judge had authorized Musk to travel or whether they had consulted him about the trip.
Musk accompanied President Trump before closing arguments began, and the president met with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
NvidiaWith Jensen Huang, CEO of apple CEO Tim Cook was also part of Trump’s delegation.
Both Mr. Altman and Mr. Brockman were present in the Oakland courtroom on Thursday.
