Lawyers for billionaire Elon Musk and OpenAI delivered their final arguments Thursday, closing out a landmark civil trial centered on the soul and structure of the world’s leading artificial intelligence (AI) company.
The high-stakes legal battle, which heads to jury deliberations on Monday, pits Musk against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Musk, who co-founded the entity as a nonprofit in 2015 with Altman and others, alleges that Altman and President Greg Brockman committed a breach of charitable trust, breach of contract, and unjust enrichment. Musk’s legal team contends that the executives secretly derailed OpenAI’s original, altruistic mission to develop safe Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) for the benefit of humanity, pivoting instead to a highly lucrative, commercialized partnership with tech giant Microsoft Corp.
“Sam Altman’s credibility is directly at issue in this case,” Musk’s attorney, Steven Molo, told the jury. Molo highlighted under-oath testimony from five key witnesses, including OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever – who left and co-founded Safe Superintelligence Inc. in 2024 – and former Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, who labeled Altman a “liar.”
Because the founders never signed a formal contract cementing a charitable trust, Musk’s team urged jurors to view years of emails, blog posts, and press interviews as a binding oral and written commitment.
OpenAI’s defense attorney, Sarah Eddy, sharply pushed back, arguing that Musk supported the for-profit pivot before walking away to launch his own rival firm, xAI. Eddy accused Musk of fabricating revisionist history out of personal spite and a desire for “dominion over AGI.”
“Mr. Musk is the one whose testimony is contradicted by every other witness,” Eddy countered, asserting that OpenAI’s restructuring was legally sound and vital to attracting the massive capital required to safely develop advanced AI.
The trial’s complexities are amplified by a ticking clock and regulatory friction.
Jurors must first decide if Musk, who also runs Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, filed his suit within the statute of limitations, as OpenAI claims he waited too long by challenging harms prior to August 2021.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers corrected the record late Thursday after Musk’s counsel falsely implied the billionaire was not seeking money; though Musk abandoned personal damages, he is still pursuing billions of dollars in “disgorgement” to fund OpenAI’s charitable wing.
Adding to the courtroom drama was Musk’s physical absence. After testifying in April, the world’s wealthiest man boarded Air Force One to join President Donald Trump on a diplomatic and business trip to Beijing this week, leaving his legal team to weather the final storm alone. Outside the courthouse, protesters gathered to condemn both billionaires, holding signs blasting the industry’s threat to human workers and environmental health.
The verdict will reverberate far beyond OpenAI’s upcoming initial public offering.
A decision in Musk’s favor could force a catastrophic unwinding of OpenAI’s corporate structure, oust Altman, and trigger regulatory dominoes under frameworks like the Delaware Attorney General’s recent charitable review.
Conversely, an OpenAI victory will provide a definitive roadmap for tech startups attempting to transition from idealistic research labs into commercial titans.
“I think a lot of the proceedings point to a more fundamental issue around control – who ultimately has decision-making authority in a structure that’s trying to serve multiple, sometimes competing, constituencies,” said Joseph Hoefer, principal and chief AI officer at Monument Advocacy. “And that, in turn, raises bigger questions about whether nonprofit-style guardrails are robust enough to constrain behavior in a fast-moving, high-stakes market like AI.”
