Mira Murati, OpenAI’s former CTO, testified under oath that CEO Sam Altman lied to her about the safety review process for a new AI model. According to The Verge AI, the video deposition was shown Wednesday during the Musk v. Altman trial, and it puts a sworn account on the record of what insiders have whispered for two years: that Altman’s word couldn’t be trusted inside his own company.
When asked directly whether Altman was telling the truth when he claimed OpenAI’s legal department had cleared a new model from going through the deployment safety board, Murati answered with a single word: “No.”
What Murati Said Happened
The specific incident centers on one of OpenAI’s GPT models. Altman told Murati that legal had decided the model didn’t need to go through the deployment safety board. Murati didn’t take it at face value. She went to Jason Kwon, OpenAI’s general counsel at the time and now its chief strategy officer.
The stories didn’t match.
“I confirmed that what Jason was saying and what Sam was saying were not the same thing,” Murati testified. To play it safe, she pushed the model through the board anyway.
Her broader criticism was about leadership, not strategy. “I had an incredibly hard job to do in an organization that was very complex,” she said. “I was asking Sam to lead, and lead with clarity, and not undermine my ability to do my job.”
A Pattern, Not an Incident
What stands out here is how Murati’s account fits a chorus of similar claims from people who worked closest to Altman:
- Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI cofounder, wrote in a 52-page memo to the board (read into a deposition) that Altman “exhibits a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs, and pitting his execs against one another.”
- Helen Toner, former board member, said in a 2024 podcast that executives brought the board evidence of Altman “lying and being manipulative in different situations.”
- The board itself, when it fired Altman in November 2023, said he “was not consistently candid in his communications with the board.”
Murati agreed with the characterization that Altman pitted executives against each other.
Why This Matters
This isn’t just courtroom drama. The deployment safety board is the internal check that decides whether a frontier model is ready to ship. If a CEO can route around it by misrepresenting legal’s position, the safety process is theater. Murati’s testimony, given under oath, turns a governance question into a documented evidentiary record.
Murati was briefly named interim CEO during the November 2023 firing. She still criticized the board’s decision in her testimony, saying “OpenAI was at catastrophic risk of falling apart.” That nuance matters: she’s not a disgruntled ex hunting for revenge. She defended the company’s continuity while testifying that its CEO misled her on safety.
She left OpenAI in 2024 and founded Thinking Machines Lab, now one of OpenAI’s most credible rivals.
What Comes Next
Expect this testimony to feed three live storylines: the Musk v. Altman litigation, regulatory scrutiny of how frontier labs self-govern on safety, and renewed pressure on OpenAI’s board to explain how it monitors deployment decisions today. Asked by The Verge why the board lost trust in him, Altman previously deflected: “That will be a better question for them.”
The board has answered. Now Murati has too. Full deposition coverage at the original source.