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A combination photo shows CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman (L) on April 28, 2026 and Elon Musk on April 29, 2026 during the trial in Elon Musk's lawsuit over OpenAI for-profit conversion at a federal courthouse in Oakland, California, U.S. Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters
In December 2015, Elon Musk and Sam Altman sat together at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in San Francisco for an interview, publicly touting their new partnership as co-chairs of a fledgling artificial intelligence research lab. Musk was a multibillionaire due to his stake in Tesla , which had gone public five years earlier, and Altman was running famed startup incubator Y Combinator. The pair had been working closely that year on an AI initiative they hoped would prevent Google from establishing monopoly control over the powerful technology. Their project, a nonprofit, was called OpenAI. Over the past three weeks, the collapse of the once-tight bond between two of the most prominent names in AI has been the subject of a high-profile trial in Oakland, California, after Musk sued Altman and OpenAI in 2024 for allegedly violating their commitment to keep OpenAI as a nonprofit. OpenAI is now valued at over $850 billion, and Musk's SpaceX has a valuation of $1.25 trillion after merging with his AI lab, xAI, in February. Both companies are racing for the public market, with SpaceX expected to disclose its prospectus as soon as this week, ahead of what could be a record offering next month. Before getting to address eager investors, Musk had to testify to a jury in downtown Oakland in an effort to prove his case and, if successful, potentially throw a major wrench into OpenAI's ambitious plans. "What you can't do is have your cake and eat it too," Musk said on April 29, in response to questioning from OpenAI's counsel. He accused Altman and Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president and another co-founder, of enriching themselves from a charity while also trying to reap the positive associations that come from running a nonprofit. Musk used his time at the witness stand to emphasize a message that he's been shouting on his social media app X, also now owned by SpaceX, for years: OpenAI wouldn't exist without him. "I came up with the idea, the name, recruited the key people, taught them everything I know, provided all the initial funding," Musk said.
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Altman testified last week that he and his co-founders didn't make any commitments to Musk about the company's corporate structure. A big problem from the early days, he argued, was that Musk felt very strongly about having total control over OpenAI, at least initially, in part because Musk didn't trust other people to make decisions. "I was extremely uncomfortable with it," Altman testified, regarding Musk's quest for power. Lawyers for Musk and OpenAI concluded their closing arguments on Thursday after three weeks of proceedings. A jury will begin deliberations on Monday to determine the validity of Musk's claims and if OpenAI, Altman and Brockman should be held liable for a breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment. Regardless of the ultimate outcome, neither tech magnate is likely to win in the court of public opinion, said University of California at Berkeley Law School professor Stavros Gadinis. "After weeks of damaging testimony, the public is left choosing between two dueling billionaires, each convinced he is the rightful steward of transformative technology," Gadinis said by email. "The answer most people will reach is: neither."
How it started
The partnership began 11 years ago, in May 2015, when Altman emailed Musk asking if he thought it would be a good idea for Y Combinator to start a "Manhattan Project for AI." Musk said the idea was "probably worth a conversation." OpenAI launched in December 2015, with Musk committing to fund the charity with up to $1 billion. "I'm super impressed with everyone so far," Musk wrote to Altman in November 2015, according to emails that were made public as part of discovery in the case. "This is a great team." Cracks began forming by 2017. Though OpenAI was making progress on research and development, Musk had demanded that Altman and other co-founders, including Brockman and Ilya Sutskever, make a list of employees and their key contributions, and fire everyone who didn't immediately make the grade, filings show. OpenAI was burning cash and needed significantly more for computing resources. Leaders discussed converting the lab into a for profit. The question of who should be CEO and hold controlling stakes loomed large, particularly for Musk, who sought as much as 90% ownership in a for-profit entity. Altman and other co-founders declined, arguing that no single person or group should have unilateral control over "artificial general intelligence," technology that may prove smarter than a human. A key point of tension in the relationship emerged in June 2017, when Tesla poached Andrej Karpathy, an AI researcher, from OpenAI. In text messages between Musk and his employees, including OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis and a project director Sam Teller, Musk's team cheered the hire, according to correspondence made public in discovery.
Lawyer Steven Molo questions his client Elon Musk as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman watches, during Musk's lawsuit trial over OpenAI's for-profit conversion before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers at a federal courthouse in Oakland, California, U.S., April 29, 2026 in a courtroom sketch. Vicki Behringer | Reuters
Zilis, who has four children with Musk, took the stand earlier this month and was questioned by lawyers for both sides about the conversations she had about OpenAI's corporate structure around 2017 and 2018, as well as whether Tesla was trying to poach OpenAI employees while she was on the board. After an OpenAI lawyer showed Zilis text messages with her celebrating Karpathy's acceptance of Musk's job offer, Zilis conceded that Musk approached Karpathy first. Musk later offered his OpenAI co-founders "an apology and a confession," Brockman recalled during his testimony. While internal drama was brewing, OpenAI's technology continued to advance. By August 2017, its systems were able to beat the world's top players of Dota 2, a multi-player action game. Musk promoted the accomplishment on Twitter. "OpenAI first ever to defeat world's best players in competitive eSports," Musk wrote. "Vastly more complex than traditional board games like chess & Go." A month later, he told Altman and other OpenAI leaders in an email that he'd "had enough." If he couldn't have control over OpenAI, he was ready to walk. "Either go do something on your own or continue with OpenAI as a nonprofit," Musk wrote in an email that was disclosed in a court filing. "I will no longer fund OpenAI until you have made a firm commitment to stay or I'm just being a fool who is essentially providing free funding for you to create a startup." Musk had ended his monthly contributions to the company. Far from putting in $1 billion, his donations totaled around $38 million.
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