Musk is looking for as a lot as $134 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, one in every of OpenAI’s greatest monetary backers. He’s additionally asking the courtroom to take away Altman and Brockman from their roles and to revive OpenAI as a nonprofit. Musk has requested the courtroom to award any damages to OpenAI’s nonprofit fairly than to him personally.
9 jurors will ship an advisory verdict, a non-binding advice, to information the choose in deciding Musk’s claims in opposition to Altman. Musk, Altman, and Brockman will take the stand. Former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella are additionally anticipated to testify. Cringey texts, uncooked diary entries, and infinite scheming behind the founding and progress of OpenAI are anticipated to come back to gentle.
In an business enveloped in secrecy, the trial might be a uncommon alternative for the general public to look backstage and discover out what’s happening within the firms creating probably the most transformative expertise ever constructed.
What are they combating about?
When OpenAI was initially based as a nonprofit, backed by a $38 million donation from Musk, the corporate vowed to create open-source expertise for the general public’s profit, unconstrained by a must generate monetary returns. However over time, the corporate started to say that intensifying competitors may make it harmful to share the way it develops its AI fashions and {that a} nonprofit construction couldn’t elevate sufficient cash to maintain constructing AI. (MIT Expertise Evaluate was first to report on OpenAI’s internal conflicts round its mission.)
The courtroom has already found that in 2017 Altman and Brockman needed to ascertain a for-profit arm, whereas Musk proposed merging OpenAI along with his electric-car firm, Tesla. When Musk threatened to cease funding, Altman and Brockman instructed him that they have been dedicated to retaining the corporate a nonprofit. Musk alleges that they pursued plans to pivot to a for-profit with out informing him. According to OpenAI, Musk agreed that the corporate wanted a for-profit entity and even needed to be its CEO.
However even when Musk proves he was duped by Altman and Brockman, he might not have standing within the first place to sue them for restructuring the corporate to function a for-profit subsidiary. Some authorized students are puzzled over why the choose allowed him to convey this declare. “The concept Elon Musk can sue as a result of he was a donor or was on the board is fairly puzzling,” says Jill Horwitz, a legislation professor who research nonprofit legislation at Northwestern College. “Usually, it’s as much as the attorneys common to convey such a declare to implement the charitable functions. And that’s already occurred.”
In October 2025, state attorneys common of California, the place OpenAI is headquartered, and Delaware, the place OpenAI is integrated, struck a deal with OpenAI to approve its new company construction on a series of conditions. For instance, a security and safety committee on the nonprofit would overview safety-related selections made by the for-profit subsidiary. Critics of the restructuring, together with Musk, AI security advocates, and civil society teams, have tried to stop it.
California’s lawyer common has declined to hitch Musk’s lawsuit, saying that the workplace didn’t see how his motion serves the general public curiosity.
