The Musk v. OpenAI lawsuit is now in the hands of a federal jury after three weeks of intense courtroom arguments. The case centers on whether OpenAI betrayed its original nonprofit mission to build safe and open artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity.
Elon Musk’s legal team argued that OpenAI moved away from its founding promise and turned into a closed, profit-driven AI company. His lawyer, Steven Molo, told jurors that Sam Altman’s credibility is central to the case and claimed Musk’s early funding was given for a specific charitable purpose.
Musk’s side says he donated around $38 million to support a nonprofit focused on safe AI research. According to his attorneys, that money helped build what later became a highly valuable commercial AI business involving OpenAI insiders and Microsoft.
The legal team also pointed to Microsoft’s major investment and OpenAI’s later restructuring as signs that the original mission had been changed without Musk’s consent. They suggested remedies that could include removing key executives, reversing the 2025 deal, and returning gains to an OpenAI foundation.
OpenAI’s lawyers rejected that argument. Lead attorney Sarah Eddy said Musk left OpenAI in 2018 and did not place binding conditions on his donations. She argued that Musk’s lawsuit came only after he launched his rival AI company, xAI.
OpenAI’s side framed the case as a fight over control, not charity. Eddy told jurors that Musk was more focused on winning the AI race than protecting the nonprofit structure.
Microsoft’s lawyer also denied wrongdoing, saying the company had no knowledge of any breach of charitable trust and simply invested in a structure already approved by OpenAI’s board and regulators.
The jury will now consider the arguments, but the final decision rests with Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. If Musk wins, the ruling could reshape OpenAI’s business structure and affect how major AI labs combine nonprofit missions with commercial growth. If OpenAI wins, it could strengthen the hybrid nonprofit and for-profit model now used across the AI industry.
