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Inside the $150B Legal Battle: Elon Musk Takes OpenAI to Court
Quick Summary A jury has been seated in Oakland federal court for Elon Musk’s legal action against OpenAI and Sam Altman The lawsuit demands $150 billion in damages, alleging OpenAI betrayed its original charitable purpose Newly disclosed internal records, including diary entries from a co-founder, show tensions during OpenAI’s formative years At its core, the trial examines charitable trust law and whether OpenAI improperly transferred public resources to private entities Testimony is anticipated from Musk, Altman, and Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO The legal confrontation between Elon Musk and OpenAI advanced to the courtroom this week following the completion of jury selection on Monday at a federal courthouse in Oakland, California. ELON MUSK: "Scam Altman owned the OpenAI Startup fund while simultaneously lying to the world that he didn’t financially benefit from OpenAI" pic.twitter.com/wBwyrMOPZq — Coin Bureau (@coinbureau) April 27, 2026 Musk, who helped establish OpenAI in its earliest stages, filed suit against the organization, its CEO Sam Altman, and fellow co-founder Greg Brockman in 2024. His central allegation is that they violated OpenAI’s foundational commitment to operate as a nonprofit entity serving the public interest. The billionaire entrepreneur is pursuing $150 billion in damages from both OpenAI and Microsoft, a major financial backer of the AI company. Should Musk prevail, the funds would be directed to OpenAI’s nonprofit division. The trial’s opening arguments are scheduled for Tuesday. Nine individuals were selected for the jury after going through voir dire with the presiding judge and attorneys representing both parties. While several potential jurors voiced unfavorable opinions about Musk, the majority indicated they could judge the case impartially. Private records made public through litigation proceedings offer an unprecedented window into OpenAI’s formative period. One diary passage from Brockman, dated 2017, states: “This is the only chance we have to get out from Elon.” A separate entry reveals Brockman contemplating his financial trajectory: “Financially, what will take me to $1B?” Between 2016 and 2020, Musk contributed approximately $38 million to OpenAI. He departed from the board in early 2018. The organization underwent restructuring in 2019, establishing a for-profit entity while maintaining nonprofit governance. More recently, it transitioned to a public benefit corporation model. Musk contends this transform...
Elon Musk Testifies That He Started OpenAI to Prevent a ... - WIRED
Elon Musk and Sam Altman appeared in a federal courtroom together for the first time on Tuesday as they fight over OpenAI’s decade-long evolution and what it means for the company’s future.The trial in Musk’s lawsuit against Altman could result in financial damages and, more significantly, governance changes at OpenAI that may complicate its plans for an initial public offering as soon as this year.As the first witness on the stand, Musk immediately sought to frame his case as more than just about OpenAI. Siding with Altman “will give license to looting every charity in America” and shake the “entire foundation of charitable giving,” Musk told a panel of nine jurors advising US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on how to rule.Musk has been concerned about computers becoming smarter than people “since he was a young man in college,” his attorney Steven Molo told jurors. Molo explained that Musk lobbied governments to pass regulations addressing the prospect of so-called artificial general intelligence, including meeting with then-president Barack Obama in 2015. “But the government was not stepping up,” Molo said. “Elon felt he had to do something.”Around the same time, Musk met with Altman, a then-30-year-old investor “whom he didn’t know very well,” Molo said. They soon launched OpenAI together as a nonprofit. Google’s unchecked progress on AI development had sparked concerns for both OpenAI cofounders, and they wanted to create a competing lab with a greater focus on safety. “My perspective is [OpenAI] exists because Larry Page called me a speciesist for being pro-humanity,” Musk said, referring to the Google cofounder. “What would be the opposite of Google? An open-source nonprofit.”While Musk believes AI could cure diseases and generate prosperity for humanity, he also told the court that he thinks the technology could veer off into catastrophic scenarios straight out of science fiction. “It could also kill all of us … the Terminator outcome. I think we want to be in a movie … like Star Trek, not a James Cameron movie,” Musk said. (While Musk has long raised alarms about AI safety, his current firm, xAI, has been criticized by researchers at other AI labs for its “reckless” safety culture.)As OpenAI began notching some of its own successes, Musk and Altman agreed that a for-profit arm with fixed returns for investors was necessary to raise extraordinary sums of money needed to fund hiring and computing, according to Molo. He compared it to a nonprof...
Jury selection begins in Musk-Altman OpenAI trial - MSN
High-profile witnesses: Musk, Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and former OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis are among the expected witnesses in the four-week trial.
OpenAI Targets Musk's Trustworthiness in Cross-Examination
Elon Musk said in his second day of testimony that he was "a fool" for funding OpenAI. Mr. Musk grew combative during questioning from a company lawyer.
