OAKLAND, Calif. — Elon Musk is expected to testify in court as early as Tuesday in his legal showdown against Sam Altman.
The outcome of the lawsuit could determine the future of OpenAI, the tech giant that the two billionaires co-founded as a nonprofit in 2015. Musk, who left OpenAI’s board in 2018, is seeking to prevent the creator of ChatGPT from becoming a for-profit company – by having publicly accused OpenAI to become a “profit-maximizing closed source”.
“Without Elon Musk, there would be no OpenAI, pure and simple,” Steven Molo, Elon Musk’s lawyer, told the court during his opening argument Tuesday.
Jury selection concluded Monday for a trial scheduled to last four weeks. Witnesses are expected to include not only Musk, the CEO of xAI, Tesla and SpaceX, and Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, but perhaps also Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, top AI researchers and current and former OpenAI board members.
OpenAI completed its restructuring in October. Its redesigned for-profit entity, which continues to be controlled by a nonprofit foundation, removed its profit cap and, later, raised $122 billion during its latest funding cycle. Musk, in his lawsuit against Altman, claimed that OpenAI’s transformation “requires lying to donors, members, markets, regulators, and the public.”
Musk, who claims OpenAI benefited from his money, advice, recruiting efforts and connections, is now seeking compensation estimated at $134 billion.
As for Altman, claimed that Musk never gave OpenAI the billion dollars he had promised, alleging that he resigned when Altman and fellow co-founders Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever refused to “bow to Musk’s demands for control of the company or, alternatively, its absorption into Musk’s electric car company, Tesla.”
“ChatGPT has brought a new spotlight to OpenAI,” Altman’s lawyers wrote in a counterclaim, citing the explosion of generative AI in 2022 that was driven by the launch of ChatGPT. “Musk has nothing to do with this.”
The trial is the culmination of The long-running feud between Musk and Altmanwhich was brewing even before becoming rival tech leaders in the AI space. Both were present in the courtroom Tuesday for the first day of arguments.
The trial is taking place just across the San Francisco Bay from OpenAI headquarters.