A nine-member jury in Oakland is set to begin deliberations on Monday in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI, placing Sam Altman’s leadership, Greg Brockman’s role and the ChatGPT maker’s multibillion-dollar corporate structure under intense legal scrutiny.
The case before US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has become one of the most consequential courtroom battles in the artificial intelligence industry, testing whether OpenAI’s evolution from a nonprofit research lab into a public benefit corporation breached duties tied to its founding mission. Musk, who helped launch OpenAI in 2015 and later left the organisation, alleges that Altman and Brockman diverted the company from its original commitment to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity.
Musk’s legal team says he contributed about $38 million during OpenAI’s formative years on the understanding that the organisation would operate as a nonprofit counterweight to dominant technology companies. The lawsuit argues that OpenAI’s later commercial arrangements, including its deep relationship with Microsoft and its restructuring into OpenAI Group PBC, placed profit and investor returns ahead of the mission Musk says he backed.
OpenAI denies wrongdoing and has framed the case as an effort by Musk to damage a rival after failing to control the organisation himself. Its lawyers have argued that the company needed vast amounts of capital and computing power to compete in frontier artificial intelligence, and that Musk was aware of those pressures long before filing suit. The company also says the claims were brought too late, making the statute of limitations a central question for jurors.
The jury is expected to consider whether OpenAI, Altman and Brockman violated charitable-trust principles or unjustly enriched themselves through the company’s commercial turn. Judge Gonzalez Rogers will separately weigh possible remedies if liability is found, including whether Altman or Brockman could be removed from leadership roles and whether parts of OpenAI’s restructuring should be unwound.
The restructuring completed in October 2025 created OpenAI Group PBC as the for-profit operating company, with the OpenAI Foundation retaining control through governance rights and a 26 per cent equity stake. Microsoft received a 27 per cent holding valued at about $135 billion, while employees and other investors hold the remaining shares. The arrangement was designed to preserve nonprofit oversight while giving OpenAI greater freedom to raise capital, expand infrastructure and pursue a potential public listing.
A reversal of that structure would unsettle one of the world’s most valuable private technology groups and could reverberate across the AI funding market. OpenAI’s valuation has been discussed in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and its capital demands remain tied to massive spending on chips, data centres and cloud services. Any court-ordered restructuring could affect Microsoft’s position, investor rights and OpenAI’s ability to finance model development at its current pace.
Testimony during the trial placed Altman’s credibility at the centre of the dispute. Former insiders described tensions over governance, transparency and the company’s 2023 board crisis, when Altman was briefly ousted before returning with stronger backing from staff and Microsoft. Altman has rejected claims that he deceived Musk or betrayed OpenAI’s mission, arguing that the organisation’s commercial path was necessary to support the development of advanced AI systems.
Brockman, OpenAI’s president and one of its co-founders, has also faced scrutiny over internal discussions about the company’s direction. Musk’s lawyers have sought to portray the leadership team as having concealed the scale and intent of OpenAI’s commercial transformation, while OpenAI has argued that Musk himself previously explored structures that would have given him sweeping control.
The case has drawn attention beyond Silicon Valley because it touches on unresolved questions about who should govern artificial intelligence systems with broad social and economic implications. Charitable-trust law, usually associated with nonprofits and donor intent, is now being tested against a company whose products are used by hundreds of millions of people and whose technology is embedded across software, education, media, finance and government services.
Microsoft’s role has also been a recurring theme. Its investment, cloud infrastructure and product integrations helped turn OpenAI from a research-focused organisation into a central player in enterprise AI. Critics say that relationship gave a dominant technology company unusual influence over an entity created to serve the public interest. OpenAI says its structure keeps mission oversight with the nonprofit foundation and requires the public benefit corporation to consider broader stakeholder interests.
The case before US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has become one of the most consequential courtroom battles in the artificial intelligence industry, testing whether OpenAI’s evolution from a nonprofit research lab into a public benefit corporation breached duties tied to its founding mission. Musk, who helped launch OpenAI in 2015 and later left the organisation, alleges that Altman and Brockman diverted the company from its original commitment to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity.
Musk’s legal team says he contributed about $38 million during OpenAI’s formative years on the understanding that the organisation would operate as a nonprofit counterweight to dominant technology companies. The lawsuit argues that OpenAI’s later commercial arrangements, including its deep relationship with Microsoft and its restructuring into OpenAI Group PBC, placed profit and investor returns ahead of the mission Musk says he backed.
OpenAI denies wrongdoing and has framed the case as an effort by Musk to damage a rival after failing to control the organisation himself. Its lawyers have argued that the company needed vast amounts of capital and computing power to compete in frontier artificial intelligence, and that Musk was aware of those pressures long before filing suit. The company also says the claims were brought too late, making the statute of limitations a central question for jurors.
The jury is expected to consider whether OpenAI, Altman and Brockman violated charitable-trust principles or unjustly enriched themselves through the company’s commercial turn. Judge Gonzalez Rogers will separately weigh possible remedies if liability is found, including whether Altman or Brockman could be removed from leadership roles and whether parts of OpenAI’s restructuring should be unwound.
The restructuring completed in October 2025 created OpenAI Group PBC as the for-profit operating company, with the OpenAI Foundation retaining control through governance rights and a 26 per cent equity stake. Microsoft received a 27 per cent holding valued at about $135 billion, while employees and other investors hold the remaining shares. The arrangement was designed to preserve nonprofit oversight while giving OpenAI greater freedom to raise capital, expand infrastructure and pursue a potential public listing.
A reversal of that structure would unsettle one of the world’s most valuable private technology groups and could reverberate across the AI funding market. OpenAI’s valuation has been discussed in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and its capital demands remain tied to massive spending on chips, data centres and cloud services. Any court-ordered restructuring could affect Microsoft’s position, investor rights and OpenAI’s ability to finance model development at its current pace.
Testimony during the trial placed Altman’s credibility at the centre of the dispute. Former insiders described tensions over governance, transparency and the company’s 2023 board crisis, when Altman was briefly ousted before returning with stronger backing from staff and Microsoft. Altman has rejected claims that he deceived Musk or betrayed OpenAI’s mission, arguing that the organisation’s commercial path was necessary to support the development of advanced AI systems.
Brockman, OpenAI’s president and one of its co-founders, has also faced scrutiny over internal discussions about the company’s direction. Musk’s lawyers have sought to portray the leadership team as having concealed the scale and intent of OpenAI’s commercial transformation, while OpenAI has argued that Musk himself previously explored structures that would have given him sweeping control.
The case has drawn attention beyond Silicon Valley because it touches on unresolved questions about who should govern artificial intelligence systems with broad social and economic implications. Charitable-trust law, usually associated with nonprofits and donor intent, is now being tested against a company whose products are used by hundreds of millions of people and whose technology is embedded across software, education, media, finance and government services.
Microsoft’s role has also been a recurring theme. Its investment, cloud infrastructure and product integrations helped turn OpenAI from a research-focused organisation into a central player in enterprise AI. Critics say that relationship gave a dominant technology company unusual influence over an entity created to serve the public interest. OpenAI says its structure keeps mission oversight with the nonprofit foundation and requires the public benefit corporation to consider broader stakeholder interests.
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