Elon Musk’s Lawsuit Against Sam Altman And Openai Heads To Trial

…in court. A high-stakes California trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is set to begin Monday with jury selection. It’s the culmination of a yearslong friends-to-enemies arc that could reconfigure the AI landscape.

The crux of the case: takesies backsies. Musk, an OpenAI co-founder and original funder, accuses Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman of breaking their vow to keep the ChatGPT maker as a nonprofit:

• Musk claims the OpenAI squad “assiduously manipulated” him out of millions of dollars in donations by promising to develop AI more safely than “profit-driven tech giants” like Google and Microsoft (the latter, as OpenAI’s main partner, is also named in the lawsuit).
• OpenAI calls Musk’s accusations “baseless” and “motivated by jealousy, regret for walking away from OpenAI, and a desire to derail a competing AI company.”

For context, Musk left OpenAI’s board in 2018 after failing to convince other founders to fold the AI startup into Tesla. The next year, Altman officially became CEO of OpenAI. Then, in 2023, Musk started xAI.

Now, Musk demands $100+ billion in damages—which he recently said he’d give to OpenAI’s nonprofit arm—the removal of Altman and Brockman, and the reversal of OpenAI’s recent for-profit restructuring.

Expect a courtroom drama

“We are about to witness the landing of the Hindenburg on the deck of the Titanic,” a corporate litigation expert told the Washington Post.

Drama is expected in part because Musk, Altman, Brockman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and several OpenAI insiders are slated to testify. Plus, court filings have already mentioned Big Tech tea, including:

• Musk’s prior attendance at Burning Man.
• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg telling Musk that he’d remove “threatening” posts.
• Musk calling Amazon founder Jeff Bezos “a bit of a tool.”

Looking ahead…if Musk prevails, OpenAI could be kneecapped right as it’s racing xAI to an IPO, handing a win to Musk’s AI startup, but potentially also to Google, Anthropic, and China’s DeepSeek.—ML