After years of buying and selling barbs on social media, Elon Musk and Sam Altman – two of Large Tech’s most influential billionaires who as soon as got here collectively to kind a little-known nonprofit referred to as OpenAI, which went on to launch ChatGPT and spark the AI arms race – at the moment are set to make their respective instances in a courtroom.
The case stems from Musk’s 2024 lawsuit towards OpenAI, wherein he has alleged that the ChatGPT-maker and its management deserted the organisation’s authentic nonprofit mission, a imaginative and prescient Musk has claimed he helped fund, to make sure that synthetic common intelligence (AGI) serves the broader pursuits of humanity.
The extremely anticipated trial begins right this moment (April 27) in a US district courtroom in Oakland, California, the place Decide Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers – who additionally heard Epic Video games’ lawsuit towards Apple over its management of the iPhone App Retailer – with steerage from a nine-person jury, will determine whether or not OpenAI has the truth is drifted from its founding mission to make sure that AGI advantages humanity.
Whereas Monday will probably be for jury deliberation, Tuesday will see opening arguments, and the remainder of the week is anticipated to function testimonies from a few of the high-profile names on the witness listing. Primarily based on what has already come to mild, the high-stakes trial is more likely to floor recent and engaging particulars concerning the AI juggernaut’s early days in addition to the circumstances surrounding CEO Sam Altman’s transient ouster in 2023 and Microsoft’s more and more frayed relationship with OpenAI.
A number of key tech trade figures together with Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, and Mira Murati, OpenAI’s former chief know-how officer (CTO), are slated to testify within the trial, which is anticipated to final a number of weeks. Shivon Zilis, a former OpenAI board member and mom of 4 of Musk’s kids, is on the witness listing together with the three OpenAI board members which might be stated to be behind Altman’s ouster in 2023, particularly: Helen Toner, Tasha McCauley, and Ilya Sutskever.
Elon Musk and Shivon Zilis arrive to the marriage of White Home Deputy Chief of Employees Dan Scavino and Erin Elmore, at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago membership in Palm Seashore, Fla., on Feb. 1, 2026. (Eric Lee/The New York Occasions)
The end result of this trial couldn’t solely form the way forward for OpenAI by figuring out how one of many world’s main AI builders controls and distributes the know-how, but in addition doubtlessly affect your complete trajectory of the tech trade’s AI race.
Right here’s a refresher on the origins of OpenAI, the backstory to the Musk-Altman feud, the important thing arguments from each side, the potential supporting proof, and the questions that the courtroom will finally be requested to weigh.
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OpenAI: A quick historical past
On Could 25, 2015, Sam Altman despatched an e-mail to Elon Musk proposing a ‘Manhattan Venture for AI’ with a view to construct enormously highly effective AI and share it with the remainder of the world “through some form of nonprofit.” Musk replied by saying that the thought was “in all probability value a dialog.”
Then senior executives of OpenAI, from left: Mira Murati, then chief know-how officer; Sam Altman, then chief govt; Greg Brockman, president; and Ilya Sutskever, chief scientist, on the companyÕs headquarters in San Francisco, March 13, 2023. (Jim Wilson/The New York Occasions)
That very same 12 months, the 2 tech entrepreneurs, together with 9 others, based OpenAI as a nonprofit with lofty charitable objectives comparable to growing AGI for the good thing about humanity. They wished to make sure a single firm like Google, which had an enormous lead in growing AI on the time, didn’t find yourself deciding what it could imply for the human race, in line with a report by The Wall Avenue Journal. In consequence, OpenAI’s founders initially vowed to freely share its AI know-how with the general public as open-source software program.
Nonetheless, by 2017, cracks started to appear within the relationship between Musk and Altman. By that point, many inside OpenAI believed that open-sourcing AI can be extra harmful than a closed ecosystem. This group, which included Musk, additionally nervous that OpenAI wouldn’t be capable of increase the cash wanted to attain its AGI aim.
Musk even steered that OpenAI ought to accomplice with Tesla and construct its AI utilizing the supercomputers that the electrical automotive firm was growing. After Altman and others refused to provide Musk management, he left OpenAI’s board, withdrew monetary help for the lab, and went on to begin his personal AI firm referred to as xAI in 2023, now a part of his rocket firm SpaceX.
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Following Musk’s exit, OpenAI appeared to search out different sources of funding by organising a for-profit arm beneath the unique nonprofit entity, and finally elevating $13 billion from Microsoft. It additionally stepped again from efforts to open-source its AI know-how.
Elon Musk’s arguments
In 2024, Musk sued OpenAI, accusing Altman and different executives of abandoning the lab’s humanitarian mission in favour of financial achieve. The lawsuit additional accuses Altman and Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president and a co-founder, of deliberately manipulating and deceiving him, and falsely promising that they’d chart a safer path to AI than profit-driven tech giants like Google and Microsoft.
Previous to the trial, a whole lot of paperwork obtained in the course of the discovery course of had been unsealed by the courtroom. Amongst them had been diary entries by Brockman who seems to precise doubts about pushing Musk out of OpenAI and committing to a non-profit-only entity. “Can’t say that we’re dedicated to the non-profit. Don’t wish to say that we’re dedicated. If three months later we’re doing b-corp then it was a lie,” one such entry learn. Brockman additionally wrote in his diary that he wished to be a billionaire.
In line with Musk, the diary entries and different unsealed paperwork clearly present that OpenAI’s management had plans to go for-profit nicely earlier than they introduced the intention publicly, and that he and different stakeholders had been intentionally misled. Brockman’s diary entries had been cited by Decide Rogers in her determination that Musk had sufficient proof that he had been misled to take the case to trial.
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OpenAI’s counter-arguments
OpenAI’s core argument is that Musk himself tried to recast the nonprofit lab as a business enterprise earlier than he left in 2018. Paperwork launched as a part of the case appear to point out that in 2017, Jared Birchall, the pinnacle of Musk’s household workplace, registered an organization referred to as Open Synthetic Intelligence Applied sciences, which was meant to be a for-profit model of OpenAI.
“His personal phrases and actions converse for themselves. Elon not solely wished, however truly created, a for-profit as OpenAI’s proposed new construction,” OpenAI stated in a courtroom submitting.
“Elon stated he wished to build up $80B for a self-sustaining metropolis on Mars, and that he wanted and deserved majority fairness. He stated that he wanted full management since he’d been burned by not having it prior to now, and once we mentioned succession he shocked us by speaking about his kids controlling AGI,” OpenAI stated in a weblog publish titled ‘The reality Elon omitted’ revealed on January 16, 2026.
It has additionally accused Musk of making an attempt to impede OpenAI’s progress whereas concurrently constructing out his personal competing AI efforts. For context, since October 2025, OpenAI is a for-profit public profit company (PBC) beneath the management of its charitable arm, which can be a big shareholder of the PBC. Initially, OpenAI proposed to put off the nonprofit’s oversight however later backtracked after going through backlash from advocacy teams.
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What to anticipate from the trial
Musk’s claims towards OpenAI will probably be determined by a nine-person jury. To make sure, Decide Rogers on Friday, April 24, dismissed Musk’s fraud claims in his lawsuit. Which means that the trial will proceed solely on Musk’s allegations of breach of charitable belief and unjust enrichment.
What occurs if the courtroom guidelines in favour of Musk? For starters, he’s reportedly searching for $150 billion in damages with the proceeds going to OpenAI’s charitable arm. “He’s asking the courtroom to return every part that was taken from a public charity — and to ensure the individuals accountable are by no means able to do that once more,” Marc Toberoff, Musk’s lawyer, stated in a press release.
Musk has additional requested the courtroom to take away Altman from OpenAI’s board and direct the corporate to reverse its latest transition to a for-profit PBC. If these damages and treatments are granted by the courtroom, it could doubtlessly cripple OpenAI, which appears to be heading towards one of many largest preliminary public choices in historical past. It might additionally signify a significant win for OpenAI’s closest rivals comparable to Anthropic and Google.
Then again, if Musk loses, it could unlock OpenAI to function as a for-profit entity, and pursue a knowledge centre enlargement plan that would price a whole lot of billions of {dollars}. The corporate has already expanded to greater than 4,000 workers working in workplaces world wide, together with in India.
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“A part of that is about whether or not a jury believes the individuals who will testify and whether or not they’re credible,” Decide Rogers had stated in courtroom, whereas dismissing OpenAI and Microsoft’s last-ditch efforts to have Musk’s lawsuit thrown out.