Musk–Altman Trial Exposes OpenAI Power Struggle as Jury Seated in High-Stakes Case

The bitter legal battle between Elon Musk and leading artificial intelligence company OpenAI, headed by Sam Altman, may ultimately hinge on a few pages from an executive’s personal diary.

“This is the only chance we have to get out from Elon,” wrote Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president and a co-founder, in the autumn of 2017. “Is he the ‘glorious leader’ that I would pick?”

Brockman’s diary entry forms part of thousands of pages of internal documents disclosed in court since Musk, one of OpenAI’s original co-founders, sued the company, its chief executive Altman and Brockman in 2024.

Jury selection was completed on Monday in a federal court in Oakland, California, ahead of a high-stakes trial over the future of OpenAI, known for its ChatGPT chatbot, and potentially the direction of artificial intelligence itself.

Musk is seeking $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, one of its largest investors, according to a person involved in the case. Any proceeds would go to OpenAI’s charitable arm.

He will attempt to persuade the nine-member jury that Altman and Brockman misled him into investing in OpenAI by departing from its founding mission as a non-profit, shifting its focus from benefiting society to pursuing profit.

The presiding judge and lawyers for both Musk and the OpenAI defendants questioned prospective jurors for potential bias. Some expressed negative views about Musk, including one who said “Elon doesn’t care about people”, though most indicated they believed they could remain impartial. A nurse and a painting company owner are among the jurors selected.


The documents offer a rare window into the egos and personalities that shaped OpenAI as it evolved from a non-profit research laboratory operating from Brockman’s apartment into a technology giant valued at more than $850 billion.

They also shed light on how some of the most powerful figures in generative AI think about the technology they are building.

The trial could complicate OpenAI’s plans for a potential initial public offering by raising questions about its leadership. A stream of unflattering disclosures may also deepen growing public scepticism about artificial intelligence more broadly.

Musk alleges that OpenAI, Altman and Microsoft betrayed the organisation’s original mission to benefit humanity by transforming it into a for-profit entity in March 2019, just over a year after he left the OpenAI board, and by exploiting his name and financial backing to build a “wealth machine”.

He is seeking to force OpenAI to revert to non-profit status and to remove Altman and Brockman from their positions, among other remedies.

OpenAI, meanwhile, argues Musk is driven by a desire to control the organisation and bolster his own AI company, xAI, which he founded in 2023 shortly after ChatGPT’s release.

The company says Musk was involved in discussions about restructuring OpenAI and had even sought the role of chief executive. Microsoft, also a defendant, denies any collusion and says it partnered with OpenAI only after Musk’s departure.

“This lawsuit has always been a baseless and jealous bid to derail a competitor,” OpenAI said in a post on X on Monday.

Musk responded that he “started it, funded it, recruited critical talent and taught them everything I know about how to make a startup successful for the public good”, adding: “Then they stole the charity.”

Altman attended jury selection, while Musk did not.

Heavyweight Witnesses Expected

Prominent Silicon Valley figures, including Musk, Altman and Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella, are expected to testify.

Shivon Zilis, a former OpenAI board member and mother of four of Musk’s children, is expected to be a key witness, with OpenAI’s lawyers alleging she shared information about the company with Musk.

OpenAI faces growing competition from rivals such as Anthropic and is investing heavily in computing resources. It is also preparing for a potential blockbuster IPO that could value the company at around $1 trillion, Reuters has reported.

Musk’s companies face their own pressures. His AI firm xAI, now integrated with his rocket company SpaceX, trails OpenAI significantly in usage. SpaceX is also expected to pursue a public listing this year in what could become one of the largest IPOs ever.

Court filings indicate Musk provided about $38 million in seed funding to OpenAI between 2016 and 2020, mostly before he left the board.

In 2019, OpenAI restructured into a for-profit arm governed by its non-profit parent, enabling it to attract outside investment.

Last year, it further reorganised into a public benefit corporation, with the non-profit and other investors, including Microsoft, holding stakes. The non-profit retains a 26 per cent share, along with warrants linked to future valuation milestones.

Musk’s legal team has calculated damages based on OpenAI’s valuation and the portion of the non-profit’s stake they attribute to his contributions.

Manhattan Project

Musk and Altman co-founded OpenAI with the aim of developing artificial intelligence to benefit humanity and counter rivals such as Google.

Altman first approached Musk in May 2015, describing the initiative as a “Manhattan Project for AI”, according to court documents.

Musk’s involvement helped OpenAI recruit leading researchers, including former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever.

By mid-2017, Musk began questioning OpenAI’s viability, at one point withholding promised funding after disagreements with Altman, Brockman and Sutskever, according to court filings. Tensions also arose over Musk’s desire to become chief executive, which unsettled other co-founders.

Around the same time, Brockman appeared frustrated with Musk’s position and questioned whether a profit-driven model could personally benefit him.

“Financially, what will take me to $1bn?” he wrote in a diary entry. “Accepting Elon’s terms nukes two things: our ability to choose (though maybe we could overrule him) and the economics.”

By January 2018, Musk appeared to have stepped back.

“OpenAI is on a path of certain failure relative to Google,” he wrote in an email.

In late 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT.

 

For any enquiries or information, contact ask@tlr.ae or call us on +971 52 644 3004. Follow The Law Reporters on WhatsApp Channels.