{"id":397052,"date":"2026-04-25T13:29:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T13:29:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/397052\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T13:29:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T13:29:21","slug":"elon-musks-lawsuit-against-sam-altman-and-openai-heads-to-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/397052\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk\u2019s lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI heads to trial"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2026in court. A high-stakes California trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is set<\/a> to begin Monday with jury selection. It\u2019s the culmination of a yearslong friends-to-enemies arc that could reconfigure the AI landscape.<\/p>\n

The crux of the case: takesies backsies. Musk, an OpenAI co-founder and original funder, accuses Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman of breaking their vow to keep the ChatGPT maker as a nonprofit:<\/p>\n

Musk claims the OpenAI squad \u201cassiduously manipulated\u201d him out of millions of dollars in donations by promising to develop AI more safely than \u201cprofit-driven tech giants\u201d like Google and Microsoft (the latter, as OpenAI\u2019s main partner<\/a>, is also named in the lawsuit).OpenAI calls Musk\u2019s accusations \u201cbaseless\u201d and \u201cmotivated by jealousy, regret for walking away from OpenAI, and a desire to derail a competing AI company.\u201d<\/p>\n

For context, Musk left OpenAI\u2019s board in 2018 after failing to convince other founders to fold the AI startup into Tesla. The next year, Altman officially became CEO of OpenAI. Then, in 2023, Musk started xAI.<\/p>\n

Now, Musk demands $100+ billion in damages\u2014which he recently said he\u2019d give to OpenAI\u2019s nonprofit arm\u2014the removal of Altman and Brockman, and the reversal of OpenAI\u2019s recent for-profit restructuring<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Expect a courtroom drama<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are about to witness the landing of the Hindenburg on the deck of the Titanic,\u201d a corporate litigation expert told<\/a> the Washington Post.<\/p>\n

Drama is expected in part because Musk, Altman, Brockman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and several OpenAI insiders are slated to testify. Plus, court filings have already mentioned Big Tech tea, including:<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s prior attendance at Burning Man.Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg telling Musk that he\u2019d remove \u201cthreatening\u201d posts.Musk calling Amazon founder Jeff Bezos \u201ca bit of a tool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking ahead\u2026if Musk prevails, OpenAI could be kneecapped right as it\u2019s racing xAI to an IPO, handing a win to Musk\u2019s AI startup, but potentially also to Google, Anthropic, and China\u2019s DeepSeek.\u2014ML<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2026in court. A high-stakes California trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is set to begin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-397052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}