Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s court battle over the future of OpenAI

Sam Altman and Elon Musk are set to face off in a high-stakes trial that could alter the future of tech’s leading AI startup, OpenAI. The trial begins with jury selection on April 27th, as Musk pushes forward his 2024 lawsuit that accuses OpenAI of abandoning its founding mission of developing AI to benefit humanity and shifting focus to boosting profits instead.

Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s court battle over the future of OpenAI

Musk was a cofounder of OpenAI and claims that Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman tricked him into giving the company money, only to turn their backs on their original goal. However, OpenAI says that “This lawsuit has always been a baseless and jealous bid to derail a competitor” in a bid to boost Musk’s own SpaceX / xAI / X companies that have launched Grok as a competitor to ChatGPT.

In his lawsuit, Musk is asking for the removal of Altman and Brockman, and for OpenAI to stop operating as a public benefit corporation. Musk has also demanded that OpenAI’s nonprofit receive up to $150 billion in damages he’s asking for if he wins the case.

Elon Musk drops fraud claims against OpenAI and Sam Altman before trial. The federal judge overseeing the case granted Musk’s request on Friday, which he says will “streamline the case” and keep things focused on “ensuring that OpenAI adheres to its public charitable mission.” Two claims will proceed to trial this week.

Elon Musk first sued OpenAI in February 2024. Despite OpenAI’s repeated attempts to throw it out, the case is now headed to a jury trial on April 27th in Northern California federal court. Musk is also suing Apple and OpenAI over claims that their deal to build ChatGPT into the iPhone is stifling competition in the AI industry.

As OpenAI was ironing out a new deal with Microsoft in 2016 — one that would nab the young startup critical compute to build what would become ChatGPT — Sam Altman needed the blessing of his biggest investor, Elon Musk. “$60MM of compute for $10MM, and input from us on what they deploy in the cloud,” Altman messaged Musk in September 2016. Musk hated the idea, saying it made him “feel nauseous.”

Elon Musk has revived his complaint against OpenAI after dropping a previous lawsuit, again alleging that the ChatGPT maker and two of its founders — Sam Altman and Greg Brockman — breached the company’s founding mission to develop artificial intelligence technology to benefit humanity.