Musk, Altman make final pitches to jury in battle over OpenAI
A jury will soon cast a vote and a judge will ultimately decide the outcome of a high-stakes showdown between Elon Musk and Sam Altman over OpenAI, the artificial intelligence startup they founded together more than a decade ago.
Lawyers made final arguments Thursday in federal court in Oakland, California, following about two weeks of testimony from the dueling entrepreneurs and other key players in OpenAI's tumultuous history.
Besides offering an in-depth look at how the company evolved from a scrappy startup to one of the world's most powerful and valuable AI companies, the trial laid out the dramatic twists and turns in Musk's falling out with his fellow co-founders.
Musk claims Altman, the startup's chief executive officer, and OpenAI President Greg Brockman "stole a charity" by exploiting his early support for an altruistic research project so that they could later get rich by turning the company into a profit-driven enterprise with billions of dollars in backing from Microsoft Corp.
OpenAI, Altman, Brockman and Microsoft have all denied the allegations, saying Musk's real motive in suing them two years ago was to gain a competitive advantage for his own startup, xAI, that he launched in 2023. They contend the world's richest person waited too long to file his suit and that his claims should be rejected because he has engaged in the same conduct he is criticizing.
Jurors are set to start deliberations on Monday, but the panel's findings won't be binding on U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. She will ultimately decide whether Musk's claims are supported by evidence, and if so, what remedies are appropriate.
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Musk is seeking as much as $134 billion in damages - to be awarded to OpenAI's nonprofit arm instead of to himself - as well as the removal of Altman and Brockman from their posts and an order unwinding OpenAI's conversion last year to a for-profit entity.
That makes the case an existential threat to OpenAI. A shakeup to its C-suite or core structure could destabilize the company during a critical moment, as it eyes a public offering with a valuation approaching $1 trillion.
OpenAI was launched in 2015 as a nonprofit with a mission to develop AI safely for the benefit of humanity. But after Musk left the board in 2018, OpenAI's leaders created a for-profit subsidiary the following year - with a capped return for investors - as they sought to raise capital for computing and staffing needs.
In 2025, the for-profit subsidiary was converted into a public benefit corporation called OpenAI Group and the nonprofit arm was renamed OpenAI Foundation.
Steven Molo, one of Musk's attorneys, argued to the jury Thursday that the pivot to a for-profit business breached the so-called charitable trust that was created when Musk donated $38 million in seed money to OpenAI during its early years.
He said the $13 billion that Microsoft invested in OpenAI between 2019 and 2023 enabled Altma
n and Brockman to enrich themselves even as they failed to open-source their technology or prioritize AI safety, as required by OpenAI's founding charter.
Molo said that while the OpenAI Foundation remained nominally in charge of the company, its leaders only hired employees a month before the trial started and their primary work has become grant-making, rather than AI research.
"Yeah, it had money, but how much money do you think it might have if they didn't breach the charitable trust?" Molo said. "If you go and rob a bank and you take a million dollars from the bank, it's not a defense to say, ‘Oh, I left $100 million in the bank'."
OpenAI attorney Sarah Eddy countered in her own argument to the jury that "common sense and the law and the evidence don't feature all that prominently in Mr. Musk's case."
"Mr. Musk has tried to persuade you that his years ago donations to OpenAI came with specific strings attached, that these strings were strong enough to last forever - to tie OpenAI up in knots as it tries to pursue its mission - and that these strings gave Mr. Musk perpetual rights over OpenAI," Eddy said. "Mr. Musk has come nowhere close to making that case."
She said no testimony or evidence showed any restrictions Musk placed on his donations, or any commitments made by leaders at OpenAI to keep the business running as a nonprofit.
Eddy also said Musk's complaints should be discounted because he participated in many discussions with his co-founders about creating a for-profit subsidiary of OpenAI before he departed the board.
Throughout the trial, Musk's legal team sought to cast doubt on Altman's credibility, reprising his brief ouster as CEO in 2023 to make the point that even OpenAI's board didn't trust him.
Molo returned to that theme Thursday, saying "the defendants absolutely need you to believe Sam Altman."
"If you cannot trust him, if you don't believe him, they cannot win," he said. "It's that simple."
Eddy urged the jury to "exercise your own judgment about who's telling the truth here."
"Mr. Musk, the witness whom no document and no other witness corroborates, or Mr. Altman, whom every other important witness in the case corroborates and whom all the documents corroborate."
Russell Cohen, Microsoft's attorney, used his final chance to address the jury to argue that the dispute between Musk and Altman was basically none of his client's business.
Pointing out that Microsoft hasn't had a major presence at the trial, he said, "I think you all know why that is."
(With assistance from Rachel Metz.)
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This story was originally published May 14, 2026 at 9:28 PM.