Elon Musk and Sam Altman are engaged in a courtroom clash of the titans over the origins of OpenAI, now one of the most important artificial intelligence companies in the world. In San Francisco federal court, they are suing each other in a dizzying series of claims and counterclaims.
In Altman’s corner, there’s an arsenal of elite firms — including Morrison & Foerster and Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz — with a long track record representing Silicon Valley royalty.
Musk has turned to a pair of boutique litigation shops. And at one firm, one of Musk’s lawyers is a clown.
Jaymie Parkkinen has been in the trenches of the litigation, signing his name to some of the most contentious discovery disputes. In a July hearing, he singlehandedly faced down three lawyers representing OpenAI and Microsoft in the lawsuit.
Outside of his work, he juggles clown performances and operates his own “Clown Cardio” business.
“All of my comedy friends — none of them can believe I’m a lawyer,” Parkkinen told Business Insider. “And none of my lawyer friends can believe I do clown.”
The art of clowning around
Parkkinen’s clown performances don’t involve any of the “Ronald McDonald birthday party kind of stuff” often associated with the jesters, he said. There are no honking red noses nor rainbow curly-haired wigs. He does not ride onto the stage on a unicycle.
Clown, according to Parkkinen, is akin to the high-concept physical comedy of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Lucille Ball. He uses the word in the same way one might say “improv” or “comedy.”
“When you strip away all the social masks that we all wear, if you strip away gender and politics and money and status and power, and you’re just your raw human self without all of the trappings of society — who are you?” Parkkinen said. “And clown tries to answer that question.”
All of Parkkinen’s performances are improvised, and the art form has a lot in common with improv comedy, he said.
In practice, Parkkinen said, clown performances involve setting up rules for the audience and then breaking them. The interplay between clown and audience reveals something about everyone, he said.
“Clowns use a lot of competitions and feats like juggling because the audience knows what is right and wrong about those things,” Parkkinen said.
As an example, Parkkinen described a performance where he decided he wouldn’t use any words with the letter “M.” He needed to figure out how to keep the show going while gauging audience reactions when he slipped up.
“It kind of becomes like this juggling act, metaphorically speaking,” Parkkinen said. “How can I keep this show going? How can I be a believable character, but also never use the letter M? And the audience is watching closely for those kinds of cues.”
Musk v. Altman
Musk first sued Altman in 2024. The lawsuit sought to stop OpenAI from transforming itself from a tax-exempt nonprofit into a corporation. According to Musk, OpenAI, under Altman’s leadership, wasn’t the altruistic hub of artificial intelligence research for the good of humanity that it was founded to be, but effectively a corporate subsidiary of Microsoft.
Altman, in his own counterclaim against Musk, alleged that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO abandoned OpenAI after briefly being involved in its infancy. Jealous of ChatGPT, Musk wanted to undermine OpenAI so that his own artificial intelligence company, xAI, could lead the market, Altman’s countersuit said. The case is scheduled to go to trial at the end of March.
Parkkinen came to work for Toberoff & Associates out of an interest in intellectual property law stemming from his involvement in the Los Angeles entertainment scene. The firm frequently represents celebrities and artists in legal disputes over their work.
Parkkinen has fought hard in discovery disputes for Musk’s case.
He fought to subpoena Mira Murati, a former OpenAI executive who served as OpenAI CEO amid Altman’s brief ouster and who now leads Thinking Machine Labs. Over objections from OpenAI and Microsoft, the judge sided with Parkkinen in allowing Murati to be served with a subpoena for a deposition after Murati dodged it 11 times.
In a separate eyebrow-raising letter, Parkkinen wrote that Musk “does not use a computer” but that emails from his phone were searched for discovery material in the litigation.
Parkkinen’s artisanal clowning has taken him to unexpected places. He founded a Clown Cardio business after realizing that the physical comedy involved in clown can be a workout. He oversees the hourlong sessions twice a month at a venue in Los Angeles. The concept took off after The New York Times wrote about the program in 2024. He has since taught classes in New York and Philadelphia and said he has received requests to open franchises in Europe.
At one point in his comedy career, Parkkinen was performing clown every other week in Santa Monica and taught clown and improv classes all over Los Angeles.
That part of his life has taken a backseat with the Musk case, Parkkinen said. The intense litigation schedule has kept him focused on legal briefs, metaphorically throwing pies at opposing counsel. (Parkkinen declined to discuss details of the case or any interactions with Musk.)
Parkkinen told Business Insider he plans to soon open his own firm doing legal work “in the intersection of IP and AI.”
He said his clown life has fed into his professional development. So much of litigation, he said, is performance.
“At the end of the day, it’s just about connecting with people, and so is being a lawyer,” he said. “You’re connecting with a judge, a jury, opposing counsel.”
In Parkkinen’s view, the stuffy world of corporate lawyers could use more clowning around.
“Lawyers are often very conservative and kind of miss out on this huge gift that’s right at their fingertips,” he said. “Just take an improv class.”
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