The jury will be selected Monday for a high-profile trial that pits Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, against OpenAI, a company he once supported and that has become a major rival in artificial intelligence.
Musk alleges OpenAI CEO Sam Altman duped him into investing millions in 2015 by presenting the startup as a nonprofit whose technology “would belong to the world.” After Musk invested, he later left; OpenAI went on to create a commercial subsidiary to raise funds for data centers and large-scale development.
Central to Musk’s complaint is the claim that Altman misrepresented OpenAI’s mission as purely altruistic. Musk asks the court to compel OpenAI to revert to nonprofit status and seeks the removal of Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman. He initially sought as much as $134 billion in damages but has since pledged any recovery to the OpenAI nonprofit.
OpenAI operates under a hybrid structure in which a nonprofit foundation oversees a for-profit arm. The company, backed by billions from Microsoft, is now valued at about $852 billion.
Observers say the case is partly about how AI should be used — amid concerns that the technology could cost jobs and pose existential risks — but many also view it as a personal and commercial rivalry. OpenAI’s ChatGPT competes directly with Grok, a chatbot launched in 2023 by Musk’s xAI lab.
OpenAI has countered that Musk’s departure stemmed more from his desire for control than from principled objections to the organization’s structure. In a post on X, the company said the lawsuit is “a harassment campaign” driven by ego, jealousy and a desire to slow a competitor. A ruling is expected by mid-May.
Edited by: Louis Oelofse