Musk and Altman face off as OpenAI nonprofit fight goes to trial

Elon Musk’s bid to force a reckoning over OpenAI’s founding mission reached federal court in Oakland, where jury selection began in a case that could decide whether the company crossed a line when it shifted toward a for-profit structure. The trial puts Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and Microsoft in the middle of a broader fight over who gets to define the future of artificial intelligence.

At the center of the lawsuit is OpenAI’s March 2019 restructuring, which came 13 months after Musk left the board. Musk contends he was kept in the dark as the company moved away from the nonprofit promise that helped launch it in 2015, and he argues that his name and money were used to build what he has described as a “wealth machine.” Opening statements were expected Tuesday in the courtroom just across the Bay Bridge from OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters.

Musk is seeking $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, with any proceeds intended for OpenAI’s charitable arm. The complaint, filed in 2024, alleges that OpenAI, Altman and Brockman betrayed the company’s original mission to benefit humanity by creating a profit-driven entity and turning a lab founded to advance artificial intelligence into a commercial powerhouse.

OpenAI has rejected those claims and says the lawsuit is baseless, portraying it as a harassment campaign driven by Musk’s desire to control the company and strengthen xAI, the startup he founded in 2023 after ChatGPT helped ignite the current AI boom. The company’s defense frames the case not as a dispute over mission drift, but as a fight over market position and influence in a fast-moving industry.

The stakes extend beyond the courtroom. OpenAI has been valued at more than $850 billion in recent reporting and is said to be targeting a possible public offering later in 2026, while Musk is also preparing SpaceX for a possible public listing. Any ruling that sharpens scrutiny of OpenAI’s structure could complicate those plans and intensify questions about how much of its public-interest framing can survive its commercial ambitions.

One internal document is already emerging as a possible flashpoint. In a 2017 diary entry, Brockman wrote, “This is the only chance we have to get out from Elon,” a line that points to the tensions that later tore through the company’s founding circle. With Musk, Altman, Brockman and Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella all looming over the case, the trial has become a test of whether OpenAI’s future belongs to its nonprofit origins, its investors, or the executives who now control its direction.