- A nine-person jury was seated in Oakland for Musk’s lawsuit claiming OpenAI breached its founding nonprofit mission.
- Of 26 original claims filed in 2024, only two remain: unjust enrichment and breach of charitable trust.
- Musk seeks up to $134 billion in disgorged gains—OpenAI calls the suit a “baseless and jealous bid to derail a competitor.”
A federal jury was seated on Monday in Oakland, California, for the trial of Elon Musk v. Sam Altman—a legal confrontation between the world’s richest person and the CEO of the most valuable AI company on earth. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is presiding, and opening arguments are scheduled to begin on Tuesday. Both Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman were in the courtroom. Musk and Altman are both expected to testify, along with former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, former CTO Mira Murati, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, according to MIT Technology Review.
Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit dedicated to building AI that “benefits humanity,” free from shareholder pressures. He contributed more than $44 million in early funding, court documents show. The lawsuit, originally filed in 2024 with 26 claims, now rests on just two: unjust enrichment and breach of charitable trust. Musk’s lawyers dismissed fraud and constructive fraud claims ahead of trial to “streamline the case,” according to a filing reported by CNBC. Musk’s team said he should receive up to $134 billion in “wrongful gains,” though he has since asked to funnel those damages back to OpenAI’s nonprofit arm.
“The perfidy and deceit are of Shakespearean proportions,” Musk’s lawyers wrote in a court filing, calling Altman’s conduct a “long con.” OpenAI fired back on X: “This lawsuit has always been a baseless and jealous bid to derail a competitor.” Judge Gonzalez Rogers cracked jokes during jury selection and addressed head-on the political polarization surrounding Musk: “The reality is people don’t like him,” she said, expressing confidence the selected jurors would respect the judicial process.
Why the OpenAI Nonprofit Trial Matters for the AI Industry
Gonzalez Rogers divided the trial into two phases: a liability phase, where the jury’s verdict will be advisory only, and a remedies phase to determine damages and next steps. The liability phase is expected to wrap up by May 21. The advisory verdict means the judge—not the jury—ultimately decides the outcome. Musk is asking the court to unwind OpenAI’s for-profit conversion, remove Altman and Brockman from leadership, and restore the organization to its original charitable mission. He also sought a court order redirecting equity gains made by the for-profit subsidiary back to the nonprofit, according to NPR.
Legal scholars question whether Musk even has standing to sue. “The idea that Elon Musk can sue over this is puzzling to a lot of people,” one expert told MIT Technology Review. California’s attorney general declined to join the lawsuit, saying the office did not see how Musk’s action serves the public interest. In October 2025, state attorneys general from California and Delaware struck a deal with OpenAI approving its corporate structure on conditions including a nonprofit safety review committee. Rose Chan Loui, director of UCLA School of Law’s philanthropy and nonprofit program, noted that Musk should have to show “what the deficiencies are in what’s been agreed to by OpenAI with the attorneys general.”
“This is part business case and part ego,” said Alex Kantrowitz, host of the Big Technology podcast, in an interview with NPR. “For Elon, pride matters more than money here.” The stakes extend far beyond bruised egos. OpenAI, now valued at over $852 billion with nearly 1 billion weekly active users, just restructured its Microsoft partnership and is reportedly planning an IPO later this year. Any ruling that unwinds the for-profit conversion would cripple those plans. SpaceX, Musk’s other company, is also preparing for what could be a record IPO—meaning both sides have financial incentives that extend well past this courtroom.
The Shrinking Claims and What’s Left
When Musk first filed suit in 2024, the complaint contained 26 separate claims. By trial day, 24 had been dismissed or withdrawn. The two that remain—unjust enrichment and breach of charitable trust—both hinge on the same core question: did Altman and Brockman illegally convert a charity into a for-profit company, or was the shift a necessary response to the economics of training frontier AI models? OpenAI has maintained that Musk was part of early discussions about becoming for-profit, and that he left the board in 2018 only after failing to take control. Court records show that in 2017, Altman and Brockman wanted to establish a for-profit arm while Musk proposed merging OpenAI with Tesla—a detail that undermines the narrative of a pure nonprofit idealist.
The trial also lands at an inflection point for the broader AI governance debate. OpenAI published a five-principle AGI framework this week, with Altman conceding the company is “materially larger” than in 2018 and may need to trade off some empowerment for resilience. Meanwhile, Musk’s own xAI faces a separate NAACP lawsuit over pollution from its Memphis data center—a reminder that the self-styled guardian of AI safety operates his own for-profit AI company. Jury selection is complete. Opening arguments begin Tuesday.
