{"id":21893,"date":"2026-04-27T23:01:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T23:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/27\/elon-musk-and-sam-altman-are-going-to-court-over-openais-future\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T23:01:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T23:01:13","slug":"elon-musk-and-sam-altman-are-going-to-court-over-openais-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/27\/elon-musk-and-sam-altman-are-going-to-court-over-openais-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk and Sam Altman are going to court over OpenAI\u2019s future"},"content":{"rendered":"
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After a yearslong legal feud, Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are heading to trial this week in Northern California in a case that could have sweeping consequences. Ahead of OpenAI\u2019s highly anticipated IPO, the court could rule on whether the company is allowed to exist as a for-profit enterprise and might even oust its current executive leadership, including Altman.<\/p>\n

Musk is suing OpenAI, alleging that Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman deceived him into bankrolling the company in its early days by promising<\/a> to maintain it as a nonprofit dedicated to developing AI that benefits humanity, only to later restructure<\/a> the company to operate a for-profit subsidiary. Musk cofounded OpenAI with Altman and others in 2015, but he left in 2018 after a bitter power struggle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Musk is seeking as much as $134 billion<\/a> in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, one of OpenAI\u2019s biggest financial backers. He is also asking the court to remove Altman and Brockman from their roles and to restore OpenAI as a nonprofit. Musk has asked the court to award any damages to OpenAI\u2019s nonprofit<\/a> rather than to him personally.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nine jurors will deliver an advisory verdict, a non-binding recommendation, to guide the judge in deciding Musk\u2019s claims against Altman. Musk, Altman, and Brockman will take the stand. Former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella are also expected to testify. Cringey texts, raw diary entries, and endless scheming behind the founding and growth of OpenAI are expected to come to light.<\/p>\n

In an industry enveloped in secrecy, the trial will be a rare opportunity for the public to look behind the curtain and find out what\u2019s going on in the companies creating the most transformative technology ever built.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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When OpenAI was originally founded as a nonprofit, backed by a $38 million donation from Musk, the company vowed<\/a> to create open-source technology for the public\u2019s benefit, unconstrained by a need to generate financial returns. But over the years, the company began to claim that intensifying competition could make it dangerous to share how it develops its AI models and that a nonprofit structure could not raise enough money to keep building AI. (MIT Technology Review<\/em> was first to report<\/a> on OpenAI\u2019s internal conflicts<\/a> around its mission.)<\/p>\n

The court has already found<\/a> that in 2017 Altman and Brockman wanted to establish a for-profit arm, while Musk proposed merging OpenAI with his electric-car company, Tesla. When Musk threatened to stop funding, Altman and Brockman told him that they were committed to keeping the company a nonprofit. Musk alleges that they pursued plans to pivot to a for-profit without informing him. According<\/a> to OpenAI, Musk agreed that the company needed a for-profit entity and even wanted to be its CEO.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But even if Musk proves he was duped by Altman and Brockman, he may not have standing in the first place to sue them for restructuring the company to operate a for-profit subsidiary. Some legal scholars are puzzled over why the judge allowed him to bring this claim. \u201cThe idea that Elon Musk can sue because he was a donor or used to be on the board is pretty puzzling,\u201d says Jill Horwitz, a law professor who studies nonprofit law at Northwestern University. \u201cTypically, it\u2019s up to the attorneys general to bring such a claim to enforce the charitable purposes. And that\u2019s already happened.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In October 2025, state attorneys general of California, where OpenAI is headquartered, and Delaware, where OpenAI is incorporated, struck a deal<\/a> with OpenAI to approve its new corporate structure on a series of conditions<\/a>. For example, a safety and security committee at the nonprofit would review safety-related decisions made by the for-profit subsidiary. Critics of the restructuring, including Musk, AI safety advocates, and civil society groups, have tried to stop<\/a> it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

California\u2019s attorney general has declined<\/a> to join Musk\u2019s lawsuit, saying that the office did not see how his action serves the public interest.<\/p>\n

Still, whether the deal holds OpenAI to its nonprofit mission is an open question. \u201cElon Musk should have to show \u2026 what the deficiencies are in what\u2019s been agreed to by OpenAI with the attorneys general,\u201d says Rose Chan Loui, the director of the UCLA School of Law\u2019s philanthropy and nonprofit program. Even with the terms in place, holding OpenAI to them depends on \u201chow much they can enforce it and how much transparency they get into OpenAI\u2019s work.\u201d<\/p>\n

More importantly, legal experts say the case is being considered under the wrong body of law. Musk argues that Altman and Brockman breached OpenAI\u2019s charitable trust by creating a closed-source, for-profit subsidiary. As a result, the court has been analyzing the claim under the law of trusts<\/a>. \u201cBut OpenAI is not a trust. OpenAI is a corporation. And so really they should be looking at \u2026 the law of charitable nonprofit organizations<\/a>,\u201d says Chan Loui.<\/p>\n

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Despite all the legal muddiness, the outcome of the trial could upend the AI race. Any one of the remedies that Musk seeks could cripple<\/a> OpenAI as it races to go public<\/a> by the end of the year. OpenAI, which is valued at over $850 billion, has described the litigation with Musk as a potential risk<\/a> to its business. Musk\u2019s rival company xAI, which makes the chatbot Grok, is expected to go public as a part of his rocket company SpaceX as early as June. If Musk prevails, xAI, which in combination with SpaceX is valued at $1.25 trillion<\/a>, could get a big advantage in the AI race.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And the trial has helped expose the bitter schism between Musk and the company he once helped to found. An OpenAI spokesperson referred MIT Technology Review <\/em>to a post<\/a> on X: \u201cThis lawsuit has always been a baseless and jealous bid to derail a competitor.\u201d Although Musk\u2019s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment, he has posted<\/a> on X that \u201cScam Altman lies as easily as he breathes.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

MIT Technology Review will have ongoing coverage of Musk v. Altman until its conclusion. Follow @techreview<\/a> or @michelletomkim<\/a> on X for up-to-the-minute reporting.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a yearslong legal feud, Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}