Jury selection began in Oakland today in Elon Musk's fraud lawsuit against Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and Microsoft, with up to $134 billion in claimed damages and the future governance of the world's most powerful AI company at stake.
The case started with a $38 million cheque. Musk contributed that amount to OpenAI in its founding years, he claims, on the explicit understanding that it would operate as a nonprofit for the benefit of humanity and that no investor would extract private profit from the technology. His lawsuit argues that Altman and Brockman knew at the time, or came to know and concealed, that they intended to restructure OpenAI into a for-profit entity backed by Microsoft with a $13 billion investment. The central exhibit is a diary entry by Brockman, cited by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers when she cleared the case for jury trial in January, in which Brockman wrote that the nonprofit framing had been a lie. That entry is the reason the case survived dismissal motions. It is now exhibit A in front of a federal jury.
The four-week trial, scheduled through May 22, will include testimony from Altman, Brockman, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, making it the single most concentrated gathering of Silicon Valley's most powerful figures under oath in a courtroom. The judge ruled in March that Musk's $134 billion damages calculation can be presented to the jury, despite her expressed scepticism about the methodology. She also blocked OpenAI from questioning Musk about alleged ketamine use, ruling it irrelevant without more specific evidence of impairment during the relevant conversations. Musk won that pretrial skirmish. The outcome of the full trial is less predictable.
Musk's legal team needs the jury to believe three things: that Altman and Brockman made an explicit promise the organisation would remain nonprofit; that they knew that promise was false or intended to break it; and that Musk's reliance on that promise caused him real financial harm. The Brockman diary helps with the first and second elements, but the third is harder. Musk's fortune has grown dramatically since the founding contributions, and OpenAI's argument is that he received everything he was contractually entitled to and departed the board for reasons that had nothing to do with nonprofit status.
OpenAI's defence centres on two parallel arguments. First, Musk left the board voluntarily in 2018 over disagreements about control, not fraud, and attempted to take over the company himself before departing. Second, the shift to a capped-profit model was publicly disclosed, debated, and implemented through legitimate governance processes, not concealment. The company will argue that a private donor to a nonprofit cannot claim $134 billion in damages for a structural change that occurred after his departure, particularly when the nominal value of what he donated was $38 million.
Why the verdict reshapes the AI industry regardless of outcome
A Musk win forces OpenAI to confront an injunction that could freeze or unwind its for-profit conversion, threatening its $157 billion valuation and its relationship with Microsoft. A loss hands OpenAI a legal clean slate to complete its restructuring and pursue a public offering, likely the next major corporate milestone. Either outcome produces a definitive legal record on whether founding promises about AI governance are enforceable, a question that matters for every nonprofit AI lab, research foundation, and mission-driven tech company that has ever sought funding on the basis of altruistic framing.
The trial also arrives at an awkward moment for both sides. Musk published a public letter last week accusing OpenAI of running a fake news astroturfing operation through a super PAC-linked site. Altman published a new five-principle framework on Sunday pledging to resist power concentration and collaborate with governments. Both documents will be available for cross-examination if either side's counsel chooses to use them. The jury will decide whether Sam Altman can be trusted. The record being built in that courtroom will outlast the verdict.
Also read: OpenAI's five new principles reframe its mission from AGI lab to AI infrastructure for humanity • DeepSeek V4 sends Zhipu and MiniMax shares down as China's AI price war deepens • John Ternus points Apple toward on-device AI and it could be the most disruptive bet in the industry
