Elon Musk’s legal fight with Sam Altman and OpenAI has moved into federal court in Oakland, California, opening a closely watched trial over whether one of the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence companies abandoned its founding mission.
Jury selection began Monday in Musk’s case against OpenAI, Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman. Musk alleges the organization, which began as a nonprofit research lab, shifted away from a pledge to develop AI for the benefit of humanity as it grew into a major corporate enterprise.
The case matters beyond the personal rivalry between two prominent tech executives. OpenAI, co-founded by Musk and Altman in 2015, is valued at $852 billion, according to the Associated Press, and its ChatGPT launch in 2022 helped accelerate public and commercial adoption of generative AI.
The dispute at the center of the case
Musk originally sued in 2024, accusing OpenAI, Altman and Brockman of betraying the company’s founding agreement. He is seeking an unspecified amount of money to fund OpenAI’s charitable arm and wants Altman removed from the OpenAI board.
OpenAI declined to comment Friday, according to CBS News. In a Monday post on X, the company called the lawsuit a “baseless and jealous bid to derail a competitor.” Musk’s xAI operates Grok, an AI chatbot that debuted in 2023 and competes with OpenAI.
Musk’s legal team did not respond to a request for comment, CBS News reported.
Musk stepped down as OpenAI’s co-chair in 2018 but continued donating until 2020, with contributions totaling $44 million, according to legal filings cited by CBS News. His break with the company deepened as OpenAI moved toward a for-profit structure and Microsoft became its biggest investor.
What the trial could affect
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is presiding over the case and will make the final decision, while the jury will serve in an advisory role. Opening statements could begin as early as Tuesday.
The trial is expected to feature testimony from both Musk, 54, and Altman, 41, at a time when the AI industry is facing intense scrutiny over competition, governance and the social consequences of rapidly advancing technology.
Julia Powles, a technology law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, told CBS News the case turns on control of a transformative technology and who benefits from it. “Both are arguing in this case that they have the public good at heart, that’s essentially the core dispute,” she said.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote Monday that the case could intensify the AI arms race as OpenAI competes with companies including xAI and Anthropic. He also said the case could influence corporate governance in AI research, though he expects any damage to OpenAI and Altman to amount to “more scrapes and bruises than real consequences.”
For now, the trial leaves a central question unresolved: whether OpenAI’s evolution from nonprofit lab to AI powerhouse breached the commitments Musk says guided its creation, or whether the case is part of a broader fight over control of the next phase of artificial intelligence.
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