Key Facts

Key Background

Musk sued Altman, Brockman and OpenAI in 2024, alleging the company abandoned its founding nonprofit mission to develop artificial intelligence for humanity's benefit and instead pivoted to a for-profit structure that enriched its leaders and partners, chief among them Microsoft. Musk cofounded and invested $38 million into OpenAI in 2015 alongside Altman and Brockman before departing the board in 2018. He has since launched competing AI venture xAI, which was merged into his X platform and most recently folded into SpaceX in a deal valuing the combined company at $1.25 trillion. OpenAI has portrayed the suit as a competitive vendetta dressed up as a public-interest lawsuit: “Motivated by jealousy, regret for walking away from OpenAI and a desire to derail a competing AI company, Elon has spent years harassing OpenAI through baseless lawsuits and public attacks,” OpenAI stated in a blog post. Sunday's filing leans on that framing, citing the exchange between Musk and Brockman as direct evidence of what the defense calls Musk's coercive intent.

Big Number

$150 billion. That's how much Musk is seeking in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft. Musk is also seeking to oust Altman and Brockman from their leadership roles and to unwind OpenAI’s for-profit arm, which converted from an entity that capped its profits into one with no profit cap last October.

Tangent

The filing draws an explicit parallel to Pampena v. Musk, the federal class action where Twitter investors sued Musk for misleading them during his $44 billion acquisition of the social media company. On March 20, a California federal jury found Elon Musk liable for misleading investors, who argued that he made false statements about the prevalence of “bots” on the site and that his takeover was “temporarily on hold” to lower Twitter's stock price. OpenAI's lawyers point to that trial as precedent: During the Twitter case, the judge allowed jurors to hear testimony that Musk's lawyers had warned Twitter's legal team it would be "World War III until the end of time for real" if Musk were forced to go through with buying the company—a threat made during settlement talks while Musk was trying to back out of the deal. Normally, statements made during settlement negotiations are kept out of court, but the judge allowed it because it spoke to Musk's motive rather than the underlying claims. OpenAI is now asking Judge Gonzalez Rogers to apply that same reasoning to the alleged "most hated men in America" message and let jurors hear about it through Brockman's testimony.

What To Watch For

The trial resumes today in Oakland, with proceedings entering their second week of an expected three-week run. Musk wrapped three days of testimony on Thursday, and Brockman is expected to take the stand Monday. The trial will be live streamed on Youtube starting today.