Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s court showdown will dish the dirt

Elon Musk cofounded OpenAI, and then flounced off in a huff when he wasn’t anointed CEO, leaving Sam Altman as the last power-hungry man standing. Now, Musk is back with a lawsuit, and a trial is scheduled to start in Oakland, California, on April 27th. Theoretically, it’s a legal case about whether OpenAI defrauded Musk. But that’s not really what we’re all doing here. This is about mess.

Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s court showdown will dish the dirt

Forget the jury — Musk v. Altman is all about the court of public opinion.

Over the past couple of years, Musk’s legal theories for punishing OpenAI have run the gamut from breach of contract to unfair business practices to false advertising. Now, he and Altman will be getting called to the stand at a particularly delicate time. Musk’s xAI, now a part of SpaceX, has filed for an initial public offering. OpenAI is rumored to be considering an IPO itself. There are only billions of dollars at stake.

And so naturally, there’s a lot of internal tech gossip coming to light. Questions about Elon’s “rhino ket” use won’t make it into the trial… but it’s in news stories because it showed up in the docket. We got excerpts from OpenAI President Greg “What will take me to $1B?” Brockman’s diary. Mark Zuckerberg, not involved in the litigation at all, has had several embarrassing texts made public, like allegedly telling Musk that he had Meta teams “on alert to take down content doxxing or threatening the people on your [DOGE] team,” weeks after claiming he refuses to moderate based on government requests. Also, Musk thinks Jeff Bezos “is a bit of a tool.”

Lawsuits appear to be Musk’s preferred alternative to therapy. The fact that the case got to trial at all is a win for Musk, who seems to be trying to damage OpenAI’s reputation however he can — from lawsuits to general shit-talking to, apparently, a homophobic dossier on Sam Altman that’s getting passed around Silicon Valley by “Musk intermediaries.” Musk v. Altman “only ended up at trial because Elon Musk can pay his attorneys to argue a losing case,” said Sam Brunson, a professor of law at Loyola University of Chicago. “If I were doing this on contingency, I’d assume I wouldn’t be getting paid.”

Over the next few weeks, high-profile AI executives, such as Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella and CTO Kevin Scott, will likely testify. Former OpenAI executives, such as cofounder Ilya Sutskever and Mira Murati, former CTO, may be called. The former board members involved in Altman’s temporary 2023 ouster from his CEO role may also testify.

Musk has actually filed four lawsuits against OpenAI. The first — for a breach of the founding agreement — was in state court, in 2024; Musk withdrew it immediately before a major hearing. We then got the current lawsuit, also filed in 2024, in which Musk alleged “Shakespearean” deceit. Several of its claims, including a laughable invocation of racketeering law, have been dismissed. Another suit, filed a year later, this time by xAI, accused Apple and OpenAI of engaging in anticompetitive behavior by making an agreement to exclusively put ChatGPT into iPhones. A fourth case accused OpenAI of poaching xAI employees and stealing trade secrets. It was dismissed.

In court starting next week, Musk will be making three main claims: that Altman and Brockman, et al., breached OpenAI’s charitable trust; that they participated in unjust enrichment; and that they committed fraud. OpenAI has countered that Musk failed to prove that Altman and Brockman ever made him a “cognizable promise” and that this suit is the latest move in Elon Musk’s campaign to harass OpenAI for his own competitive advantage.

The details that come out in the trial about OpenAI “will absolutely change its reputation, if it’s still trying to claim it’s doing this in some high-minded, ‘we want to make AI safe for humanity’ way,” said Deven Desai, a professor of business law and ethics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Since this lawsuit was initially filed, OpenAI’s reputation has cratered amid exec reshuffling and the dominance of competitors like Anthropic.