Musk v. Altman: $150 Billion Trial Over Control of OpenAI Opens in the US

On April 27, a trial that could rewrite the history of the world's largest AI startup opened in California. Elon Musk and Sam Altman faced each other in court, with OpenAI's fate, hundreds of billions of dollars and a fundamental question at stake: who really owns the future of artificial intelligence. The case is already being called one of the most significant technology trials in history.

Musk sued OpenAI back in 2024, and the case has grown since then, with new defendants, new accusations and new claims added along the way. The core allegation is that OpenAI betrayed its original mission of developing safe AI for the benefit of all humanity and turned into a profit-driven commercial structure. Musk says he was deliberately misled: he donated money to a nonprofit with specific ideals, and that organization ended up a corporation valued at hundreds of billions of dollars.

Musk was among OpenAI's co-founders, alongside Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. In 2018 he left the board, officially because of a conflict of interest with Tesla. Since then Musk has built his own AI business: the company xAI and its flagship product Grok, a direct competitor to ChatGPT. That fact became the key argument in OpenAI's defense.

The company categorically rejects all the accusations. In an official statement on the social network X, OpenAI called the lawsuit a "baseless and envy-driven attempt to eliminate a competitor" in order to advance the interests of Musk's own companies: SpaceX, xAI and X. According to OpenAI's lawyers, the real goal of the suit is not to protect a nonprofit mission but to remove a rival from the AI market. They point to the plaintiff's obvious conflict of interest: a man who built a competing product is trying to block a rival's development through the courts.

Musk's demands are unprecedented in scale. He seeks the immediate removal of Altman and Brockman from their posts, an end to OpenAI's operation as a public benefit corporation, and, if he wins, compensation of up to $150 billion paid to the company's nonprofit arm. In parallel, xAI has filed a separate lawsuit against OpenAI and Apple, accusing them of violating antitrust law.

Meanwhile, OpenAI continues its transformation. The company has raised multibillion-dollar investments, its valuation exceeds $300 billion, and it is actively preparing for an IPO. This commercial transformation is the central subject of the dispute: Musk insists it violates the terms of the original agreement between the founders and changes the very nature of the organization.

On the eve of the hearings there was an unexpected twist: Musk withdrew a number of fraud allegations against Altman and OpenAI, concentrating on his remaining claims. That narrowed the front of the legal attack somewhat, but did not change the overall strategy of the suit. Jury selection began on April 27, and the full trial is expected to stretch over several weeks.

For the whole technology industry, the stakes go far beyond a personal conflict between two billionaires. If the court sides with Musk, it would set an important precedent: nonprofit organizations in AI would gain a legal tool to defend their original mission. If OpenAI wins, the company will continue its transformation into a public corporation. Either way, the outcome will set the rules of the game for the next generation of AI companies: how to structure corporate governance and to whom they answer.

Musk v. Altman is not only a legal dispute over money and control. It is a public battle over the narrative: who "betrayed" the ideals of the AI revolution, and who is building its real future. The court's answer will determine not only OpenAI's fate but the industry's rules for years to come.