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Elon Musk\u2019s lawsuit against Sam Altman will head to trial this month in an Oakland, California, federal courtroom, where nine jurors will settle a years-long dispute between the cofounders of OpenAI over the group\u2019s founding mission. While spats between Silicon Valley\u2019s most influential billionaires are notable in their own rite, former OpenAI employees and nonprofits have taken a special interest in this case because the ruling could influence how the world\u2019s leading AI developer controls and distributes its technology.<\/p>\n
The stakes are especially high for OpenAI\u2019s corporate future, as a bad outcome in this case could negatively impact its plans to file for an IPO later this year. The ChatGPT-maker is racing against Anthropic and Musk\u2019s SpaceX (which now owns a rival AI lab, xAI) to go public. Musk\u2019s status as an OpenAI competitor\u2014who could benefit significantly if the case goes his way\u2014has raised serious questions about whether he\u2019s the right person to bring it before a jury. A settlement out of court is still possible, though legal experts and people close to the case say it\u2019s unlikely.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s everything you need to know about Musk v. Altman<\/em>.<\/p>\n Musk\u2019s suit essentially accuses OpenAI of straying from its founding nonprofit mission: ensuring AGI, a highly capable AI system that can perform a wide range of jobs, benefits humanity. The defendants in the case are OpenAI, Altman, OpenAI\u2019s President and cofounder Greg Brockman, and OpenAI\u2019s biggest investor, Microsoft.<\/p>\n Despite generating billions of dollars in revenue, OpenAI is still overseen by a nonprofit today. Musk was one of the original cofounders of the OpenAI nonprofit and donated about $38 million to it during those early days, but he split off in 2018 after getting into disagreements with Altman and Brockman. Now, Musk\u2019s lawsuit has been whittled down to three core claims against OpenAI.<\/p>\n The first concerns whether OpenAI breached its charitable trust. Musk alleges that in the early days of OpenAI, he believed he was investing in a nonprofit with a commitment to open source, or making its AI technology available widely for free download. However, Musk alleges that Altman and Brockman have not used his investment as he intended. OpenAI now has a for-profit arm that generates billions of dollars in yearly revenue, and the company is highly secretive about the code for its best AI models. (OpenAI alleges that Musk knew back in 2017 that the company would need a for-profit division, and even helped his cofounders set up the corporate structure.) Microsoft is accused of aiding and abetting the breach of the charitable trust.<\/p>\n The second core claim is fraud, and specifically that Altman and Brockman deceived Musk about their intentions to turn OpenAI into a for-profit company. The third claim is unjust enrichment, which argues that Altman, Brockman, and other OpenAI investors have enriched themselves at the expense of Musk.<\/p>\n The defendants say Musk\u2019s claims are baseless and that he is simply seeking to cripple OpenAI as he tries to build up xAI.<\/p>\n Musk is asking the court for a number of different remedies, including removing Altman and Brockman from their roles at OpenAI, returning the ChatGPT-maker\u2019s \u201cill-gotten gains\u201d to the company\u2019s nonprofit, and blocking OpenAI from existing as a public benefit corporation, which its for-profit arm is categorized as today.<\/p>\n When reached for comment, an OpenAI spokesperson directed WIRED to a section of a company blog that reads, \u201cMotivated by jealousy, regret for walking away from OpenAI and a desire to derail a competing AI company, Elon has spent years harassing OpenAI through baseless lawsuits and public attacks.\u201d Lawyers for Musk did not respond to multiple requests for comment.<\/p>\n Former OpenAI researchers and AI safety nonprofits that have filed amicus briefs in support of Musk in this case say they believe it\u2019s important the ChatGPT maker is held accountable to its founding principles of safety and benefiting humanity, especially as its commercial pressures grow.<\/p>\n Jacob Hilton is part of a group of former OpenAI employees that signed one such brief objecting specifically to how OpenAI converted into a for-profit entity. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely important that OpenAI lives up to its mission. I think we\u2019re still seeing a lot of things that OpenAI is doing that, in my view, aren\u2019t really consistent with its mission. One recent example people are talking about is backing this Illinois state bill that would shield them from liability,\u201d Hilton says.<\/p>\n Other groups and experts plan to follow the trial because of its potential to conflict with decisions by the attorneys general of Delaware and California, each of which have regulatory authority over OpenAI\u2019s nonprofit. They both already agreed to allow the for-profit conversion to proceed as long as the company follows certain commitments.<\/p>\n The attorneys general \u201care in a much better position to advocate for the public interest and the charities mission\u201d than Musk, says Nathan Calvin, general counsel for Encode, a nonprofit that has supported several AI safety bills and objected to the OpenAI restructuring. He adds that Encode\u2019s focus is on holding OpenAI accountable to its AG deals, \u201cparticularly given the pressures OpenAI may be under to cut corners on those commitments in the context of racing for an IPO.\u201d<\/p>\n Jill Horwitz, a law professor with expertise in nonprofits and innovation at Northwestern University, says she is puzzled at why the court is allowing a private actor to challenge a structure that a state authority has just blessed. \u201cIt\u2019s not a great precedent for nonprofit law if an aggrieved founder can override the actions of the attorney general,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n This lawsuit has already surfaced hundreds of emails between Altman and OpenAI\u2019s former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, entries from Brockman\u2019s diary, and texts between Musk and Mark Zuckerberg\u2014but the trial is likely to reveal a lot more about the core people behind OpenAI.<\/p>\n Of course, Musk, Altman, and Brockman will take the stand in this trial. However, several other witnesses from OpenAI\u2019s past and present are expected to testify as well. That includes Sutskever, former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and CTO Kevin Scott, and OpenAI Board chairman Bret Taylor. Other central players expected to testify are Shivon Zillis, the former OpenAI board member and mother of several of Musk\u2019s children, as well as Jared Birchall, the CEO of Musk\u2019s brain-chip interface company Neuralink and manager of his family office.<\/p>\n It\u2019s possible that former board members involved with Altman\u2019s brief ouster as CEO will testify via video conference, including Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley.<\/p>\n Almost certainly not, but that doesn\u2019t necessarily disqualify it altogether. Lu\u00eds Calder\u00f3n G\u00f3mez, an associate professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law with expertise on tax laws and charities, tells WIRED that Musk may be acting out of self-interest, but he still may be in the right.<\/p>\n \u201cThe cynical view is that Musk is trying to hinder OpenAI to get [xAI\u2019s AI chatbot] Grok going. But even if that\u2019s right, the right remedy for fraud is to unwind the structure and to have oversight going forward,\u201d said G\u00f3mez. \u201c[What Musk is doing:] It\u2019s a good attempt to push back on that general commercialization of charities.\u201d<\/p>\n Hilton, the former OpenAI researcher, says he has mixed feelings about the case since Musk \u201cstands to benefit personally.\u201d However, he believes there \u201care some potentially good outcomes, like the OpenAI nonprofit being given more independence, or more light being shed on OpenAI\u2019s original mission.\u201d<\/p>\n This is an edition of<\/em> Maxwell Zeff\u2019s<\/em><\/a> Model Behavior newsletter<\/strong><\/em><\/a>. Read previous newsletters<\/em> here.<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Updated: 4\/16\/26, 7:05 pm EST: This story has been updated to clarify that Elon Musk\u2019s lawsuit includes only one claim against Microsoft.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Save StorySave this storySave StorySave this story Elon Musk\u2019s lawsuit against Sam Altman will head to trial this month in an Oakland, California, federal courtroom, where nine jurors will settle a years-long dispute between the cofounders of OpenAI over the group\u2019s founding mission. While spats between Silicon Valley\u2019s most influential billionaires are notable in their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49192,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-49191","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What Is This Case?<\/h2>\n
Why Should I Care?<\/h2>\n
Have Any Juicy Details Emerged? Will Any More Come Out?<\/h2>\n
Is Musk the Right Person to Bring This Case?<\/h2>\n