Musk vs. Altman: The OpenAI Trial That Could Reshape AI’s Future

After years of legal sparring, Elon Musk and Sam Altman are finally heading to trial in Northern California this week. The case has been brewing since Musk sued OpenAI in 2023, alleging that Altman and president Greg Brockman tricked him into bankrolling the company’s early days with promises it would stay a nonprofit. Now, with OpenAI’s highly anticipated IPO looming, the stakes are enormous. The court could effectively decide whether OpenAI gets to exist as a for-profit enterprise, and even whether Altman keeps his job.

Musk cofounded OpenAI with Altman back in 2015, but left in 2018 after a bitter power struggle. His lawsuit claims he was deceived into donating $38 million to a nonprofit that supposedly would develop open-source AI for humanity’s benefit. Instead, Musk argues, Altman and Brockman quietly restructured the company to operate a for-profit subsidiary, enriching themselves and investors like Microsoft. He’s seeking up to $134 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, and wants the court to remove Altman and Brockman from their roles and restore OpenAI to nonprofit status. Notably, Musk has asked that any damages go to OpenAI’s nonprofit, not to him personally.

Nine jurors will deliver an advisory verdict — non-binding, but likely to guide the judge’s final decision. Musk, Altman, and Brockman are all expected to testify. So are former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, former CTO Mira Murati, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Expect cringey texts, raw diary entries, and endless scheming to come to light. In an industry that usually operates in secrecy, this trial is a rare chance for the public to peek behind the curtain.

What’s the fight really about?

OpenAI’s original nonprofit charter promised to create open-source technology for the public good, unconstrained by profit motives. But over time, the company argued that competitive pressures made it dangerous to share its AI models openly, and that a nonprofit structure couldn’t raise enough capital to keep building. MIT Technology Review was first to report on those internal conflicts.

The court has already found that by 2017, Altman and Brockman wanted to establish a for-profit arm, while Musk proposed merging OpenAI with Tesla. When Musk threatened to stop funding, Altman and Brockman assured him they were committed to the nonprofit model. Musk alleges they then pursued the for-profit pivot without telling him. OpenAI counters that Musk agreed the company needed a for-profit entity — and even wanted to be its CEO.

But here’s the thing: even if Musk proves he was duped, legal scholars aren’t sure he has standing to sue over the restructuring. “The idea that Elon Musk can sue because he was a donor or used to be on the board is pretty puzzling,” says Jill Horwitz, a law professor at Northwestern who studies nonprofit law. “Typically, it’s up to the attorneys general to bring such a claim. And that’s already happened.”

In October 2025, California and Delaware attorneys general struck a deal with OpenAI to approve its new corporate structure, subject to conditions like a safety committee review process. Critics — including Musk, AI safety advocates, and civil society groups — have tried to stop it. California’s attorney general declined to join Musk’s lawsuit, saying the office didn’t see how his action serves the public interest.

The missing piece: what about the public interest?

Whether the attorney general deal actually holds OpenAI to its nonprofit mission is an open question. “Elon Musk should have to show what the deficiencies are in what’s been agreed to by OpenAI with the attorneys general,” says Rose Chan Loui, director of the UCLA School of Law’s nonprofit program. That’s a fair point. Musk’s crusade may be driven as much by ego and competitive rivalry as by genuine concern for AI safety. But the trial will force OpenAI to defend its transformation from a tiny research lab into a massive for-profit corporation, and that’s a conversation worth having.

I’ll be watching closely. The testimony alone could be explosive. And whatever the verdict, this case will set a precedent for how we think about the governance of AI companies — and whether promises made in the early days can ever be enforced.