Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015. He left the board three years later. Now he's suing the company in federal court, and the trial starts April 27th in Oakland, California.
The core legal claim is fraud: Musk alleges OpenAI abandoned its nonprofit charter by forging a commercial partnership with Microsoft - worth roughly $13 billion across multiple funding rounds - and building revenue-generating products like ChatGPT that were never part of the original mission. OpenAI's position is that Musk knew exactly where the company was headed, had his own ambitions to control AI development, and filed this lawsuit only after those ambitions failed - including an alleged attempt to acquire OpenAI's assets outright. OpenAI has filed counterclaims, arguing Musk is trying to handicap a direct competitor to his own AI company, xAI.
Fraud claims in corporate disputes rarely produce dramatic verdicts. What makes this worth watching is everything the discovery process has already compelled into the open: board minutes, internal communications, and executive depositions that detail how OpenAI actually made its decisions about commercialization. When a company whose valuation reportedly tops $300 billion has its internal reasoning pulled into a public courtroom, the details tend to get uncomfortable. Specific about who knew what when Microsoft money first arrived. Specific about what role, if any, Musk was promised before he walked.
The trial is expected to run several weeks.