OAKLAND, April ‌28 — A trial that could help shape the future of artificial intelligence begins today, with billionaires Elon Musk and Sam Altman at odds over the evolution of ChatGPT maker OpenAI from a nonprofit to a profit-seeking juggernaut worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Opening statements in Musk’s civil lawsuit against ‌OpenAI and Altman will take place in the Oakland, California, federal court, following the selection yesterday of nine jurors.

Musk claims that Altman and Greg Brockman, respectively OpenAI’s chief executive and president, betrayed him and the public by abandoning the company’s mission to be a benevolent steward of AI for the benefit of humanity, and turning it into a “wealth machine” for themselves and investors.

The world’s richest person is seeking US$150 billion (RM593 billion) in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, one of its largest investors, with proceeds going to OpenAI’s charitable arm.

He also wants OpenAI to revert to a nonprofit, with Altman and Brockman removed as officers and Altman removed from its board.

Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX founder, has said he provided about US$38 million of seed money to OpenAI for its original mission, only to see OpenAI create a for-profit entity in March 2019, a little over a year after he left its board.

OpenAI countered that Musk knew ‌about and supported the transformation, and sued only after failing to become CEO, and starting his own AI company to stunt its ⁠growth.

Musk is no longer seeking damages for himself as he pursues breach ⁠of charitable trust and unjust enrichment claims.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has ⁠said she wants jurors to begin deliberations on ⁠the defendants’ liability by May 12.

The ⁠jurors include nurses, city workers and retirees. If they find the defendants liable, both sides will argue possible remedies to the judge.

Musk, Altman and Microsoft chief Satya Nadella are among the witnesses expected to testify, with Musk taking the stand as soon as this week.

Egos and ⁠personalities

Musk and Altman co-founded OpenAI in 2015 with a goal of developing AI to benefit humanity and fend off rivals such as Google.

The trial could offer a window into some of the egos and personalities that shaped OpenAI as it evolved from a nonprofit research lab in Brockman’s apartment to a company worth more than $850 billion.

It risks complicating OpenAI’s plans for a potential initial public offering by casting doubt on its leadership, and could also intensify Americans’ fears about AI technology more broadly.

OpenAI has argued that Musk was motivated by ⁠jealousy in trying to undermine its growth and prop up his own xAI, which he founded in 2023 shortly after OpenAI launched ChatGPT.

It has said Musk was involved in discussions to create OpenAI’s new structure and demanded to ⁠be CEO.

Microsoft has denied having colluded with OpenAI and says it teamed up with OpenAI only after Musk left.

OpenAI faces growing competition from ⁠rivals including Anthropic, and ⁠is spending billions on computational resources. A potential IPO could value the company at US$1 trillion, Reuters has reported.

Musk’s xAI trails far behind OpenAI in usage. He has folded that business into his rocket company SpaceX, whose own potential IPO this year could be the largest ever.

Last fall, OpenAI overhauled its ‌structure again to become a public benefit corporation, in which the nonprofit and other investors including Microsoft hold stakes. The nonprofit holds a 26 per cent stake, plus warrants if OpenAI hits certain valuation targets.

A public benefit corporation could make OpenAI more investor-friendly while retaining its charitable origins. — Reuters

OAKLAND, April 28 — Elon Musk’s courtroom showdown with Sam Altman got underway here Monday with the selection of jurors entrusted to decide whether the co-founders of OpenAI betrayed a mission to build artificial intelligence for the good of humanity, not for money.

The legal clash in a courtroom across the bay from San Francisco pits Musk, the world’s richest person, against a startup he once backed and now competes with in the booming AI sector.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is a formidable rival to the chatbot Grok, made by Musk’s xAI lab.

“This is a tech soap opera that all investors will be watching,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note to investors.

“There will be a lot of dirt and slings thrown around in court between Musk and Altman and that is not a good thing for anyone involved...but Musk has made this personal.”

Jurors were asked their thoughts of Musk and Altman, and whether they could put aside any bias while considering evidence at trial.

“Elon doesn’t care about people, much like our president,” said a US retiree being considered for the panel.

An Oakland city employee in the jury pool referred to Musk as “a jerk.”

“Brilliant engineer, brilliant businessman, but many of his actions were very harmful for the country,” a prospective juror who works for a climate tech company said of Musk.

In contrast, Altman’s name struck potential jurors as familiar but did not evoke strong opinion.

Musk’s lawsuit is part of a feud between him and OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman, but it also spotlights a debate about whether AI should ultimately serve to benefit a privileged few or society as a whole.

Court filings lay out how Altman convinced Musk to back OpenAI in 2015, acting as a co-founder for a non-profit lab whose technology “would belong to the world.”

Musk pumped millions of dollars into the lab, which he subsequently left.

However, OpenAI established a commercial subsidiary, as it needed hundreds of billions of dollars for data centers to power its technology.

Microsoft has poured billions of dollars into OpenAI and its CEO Satya Nadella is among those slated to testify at the trial.

Demonstrators protest outside the courthouse at the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building as jury selection begins in the lawsuit between Elon Musk and OpenAI in Oakland on April 27, 2026. — AFP pic

Benevolence or power?

Musk argues in his lawsuit that he was deceived about OpenAI’s mission being altruistic.

He fired off a social media post on Monday calling the OpenAI chief “Scam Altman.”

San Francisco-based OpenAI has countered in court filings that its break-up with Musk was due to his quest for absolute control rather than its non-profit status.

“This case has always been about Elon generating more power and more money for what he wants,” OpenAI said in a recent X post. “His lawsuit remains nothing more than a harassment campaign that’s driven by ego, jealousy and a desire to slow down a competitor.”

The startup noted that days after Musk entered the AI race in 2023 he called for a six-month moratorium on development of advanced AI.

The judge presiding over the trial will decide by late May – guided by an advisory jury’s findings – whether OpenAI broke a promise to Musk in a drive to lead in AI, or just smartly rode the technology to market dominance.

Along with calling for OpenAI to be forced to revert to a pure non-profit, Musk’s suit urges the ouster of Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman, who is the startup’s president.

Musk, who had sought as much as US$134 billion (RM529 billion) in damages, has since renounced any personal benefit, pledging to redirect any award to the OpenAI non-profit. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has reserved the right to determine any remedies herself.

OpenAI now has a hybrid governance structure giving its non-profit foundation control over a for-profit arm.

Musk, who gutted the trust and safety team at Twitter after buying the social media platform that he renamed X, faces the challenge of convincing a jury and a judge that the company behind ChatGPT was built on a lie. — AFP

Legally questionable confidentiality clause adopted almost word for word from demands of Microsoft and trade groups

Microsoft and other US tech companies successfully lobbied the EU to hide the environmental toll of their datacentres, an investigation has found, with demands to block a database of green metrics from public view written almost word for word into EU rules.

The secrecy provision, which the European Commission added to its proposal almost verbatim after industry lobbying in 2024, hinders scrutiny of the pollution that individual datacentres emit. It leaves researchers with just national-level summaries of their energy footprints.