The high-profile trial between Elon Musk and the company he helped co-found, OpenAI, is all set to get underway inside a courtroom soon. Jury selection in the case is set to begin today in the federal courthouse in Oakland, California, with Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers overseeing the proceedings.
The high-stakes battle between the two sides was labelled by the judge as “Billionaires versus billionaires” in a hearing last year. Since the original lawsuit was filed by Musk in 2024, there have been a lot of twists and turns in the case before it reached the courtroom. Here’s everything you need to know about the Elon Musk vs OpenAI lawsuit.
Why is Elon Musk suing OpenAI?
Musk is suing OpenAI for betraying its founding mission of developing AI for the benefit of humanity and instead shifting towards a profit-driven model via its partnership with Microsoft. While the lawsuit was originally filed against OpenAI, the billionaire later added Microsoft as a party in the case.
The billionaire argues that he contributed around $38 million to OpenAI in its infancy, and the funding was provided with the understanding that the technology developed by the startup would remain open-source and be developed for the benefit of humanity.
“Elon Musk’s case against Sam Altman and OpenAI is a textbook tale of altruism versus greed. Altman, in concert with other defendants, intentionally courted and deceived Musk, preying on Musk’s humanitarian concern about the existential dangers posed by AI,” the lawsuit filed by Musk reads.
The lawsuit notes that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman “preyed on Musk’s well-known concerns about the existential harms posed by AI/AGI, and convinced him to fund and back what they falsely claimed would be a ‘nonprofit’ devoted to the safe and open development of AI.”
Musk is now asking the court to grant him around $134 billion as compensation, along with the removal of Sam Altman as CEO. The billionaire says he doesn’t want the money for himself and has instead said that the awarded amount be given to OpenAI’s non-profit arm.
How did OpenAI respond to the lawsuit?
OpenAI has denied the allegations of moving away from its founding mission and says it remains dedicated to “creating AGI that benefits all of humanity.” The company, in its response, accuses Musk of initiating a “harassment campaign” against it, driven by his own ego and a desire to clear the field for his rival AI firm, xAI.
OpenAI alleges that Musk actually abandoned the company in 2018 because co-founders Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and Ilya Sutskever refused to bow to his demands for absolute control.
In a blog post, OpenAI claims that Musk “demanded full control of OpenAI and even wanted to merge it into Tesla (he would later merge his for-profit AI company, xAI, into SpaceX). When we wouldn’t agree to his terms, he walked away and told us we had a ‘0% chance’ of success. He turned out to be wrong, though, and a resentful Elon has attacked OpenAI ever since.”
“Elon donated $38 million to the OpenAI nonprofit, which was spent exactly as intended and in service of the mission. Despite claiming and receiving a tax deduction for this donation, he’s now asking the court to treat it as an investment that entitles him to significant ownership of OpenAI,” the blog post notes.
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