By Angel Au-Yeung
Lawyers representing Elon Musk and Sam Altman began opening statements on Tuesday in a landmark trial that could potentially upend OpenAI's future.
Elon Musk has accused OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, of manipulating him into thinking he was donating tens of millions of dollars to help launch a nonprofit to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity, only to turn it into a for-profit venture.
OpenAI has said that Musk not only knew about the plan to create a for-profit structure, but that he supported it and requested unilateral control of the venture. The OpenAI founders said no to his request, leading Musk to start his own AI company and now sue as a "broader strategy of harassment aimed at slowing us down," the company has alleged.
The remedies that Musk is asking for include the removal of Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman from their leadership roles at the AI company, damages worth more than $180 billion to be paid from OpenAI's for-profit arm to its nonprofit parent, and unwinding the company's recent conversion to a more traditional governance structure.
Legal experts have said Musk is an underdog in the case. Musk and Altman both appeared in court on Tuesday.
On Monday, nine jurors were selected out of several dozen after facing questions from Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers and lawyers from both sides about their potential biases.
Altman and Brockman appeared in person during jury selection on Monday. A lawyer for Musk said the billionaire was absent "not out of a lack of interest" but because he was handling other matters.
But the trial was clearly on Musk's mind. He posted more than 20 times Monday on X about OpenAI and Altman, including some reposts. As jury selection kicked off, Musk wrote: "Scam Altman and Greg Stockman stole a charity. Full stop."
For the potential jurors who expressed a negative bias toward Musk on written questionnaire forms, the judge pressed them to explain the source of their bias. Nearly all cited Musk's political advocacy.
Judge Gonzalez Rogers told jurors the trial isn't about Musk's political work, but about two parties "who disagree about what happened factually." She then asked those potential jurors if they could put aside their biases toward Musk for this trial. Nearly all said they could.
A few potential jurors who expressed distrust toward the AI industry as a whole were also asked about their biases.
After the potential jurors left the courtroom for a recess, Steven Molo, lead lawyer for Musk, tried to get a number of jurors thrown out of consideration, including two who called the billionaire "a piece of garbage" and "a world-class jerk" in their questionnaire forms.
"The reality is, people don't like him," the judge said in response. "Many people don't like him. But that doesn't mean that Americans cannot, nevertheless, have integrity for the judicial process."
Following jury-selection procedure, both sides were allowed to remove a limited number of potential jurors before the court agreed on the final nine.
The trial is taking place in federal court in Oakland, Calif. The presiding judge has handled high-profile tech-industry cases including the long-running antitrust lawsuit between Epic Games and Apple.
Hundreds of legal documents unsealed in recent months as part of the OpenAI lawsuit have offered a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the Silicon Valley elite. The documents range from emails between Musk and Altman to the private diary entries of Brockman.
"We've been thinking that maybe we should just flip to a for profit," Brockman wrote in a private journal entry in 2017, obtained as part of legal discovery. "Making the money for us sounds great and all."
Musk's lawyers pointed to those private journal entries as proof the OpenAI founders "secretly had other plans" about the company's corporate structure, according to a court filing.
News Corp, owner of the Journal, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.
Write to Angel Au-Yeung at angel.au-yeung@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 28, 2026 12:03 ET (16:03 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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