The most anticipated corporate trial in Silicon Valley history began on Monday in a federal courthouse in Oakland, California, as Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers seated a nine-person jury in the case of Musk v. Altman. Opening arguments are scheduled for Tuesday, with CNBC reporting it will have reporters in the courtroom throughout the proceedings. The liability phase of the trial is expected to conclude by May 21, after which Judge Gonzalez Rogers will determine appropriate remedies.

The case pits Elon Musk — the world's richest person, co-founder of OpenAI, and CEO of xAI — against Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, and Greg Brockman, the company's president. Musk filed the original lawsuit in 2024, alleging that Altman and Brockman reneged on their commitments to keep OpenAI a nonprofit and follow its charitable mission. Of the 26 original claims, only two remain after extensive pretrial litigation: unjust enrichment and breach of charitable trust. Musk's lawyers have argued he is entitled to up to $134 billion in 'wrongful gains,' though Musk has indicated he would funnel any damages back into the OpenAI charity rather than retain them personally.

The Legal Landscape

The trial is structured in two phases. The liability phase, which the jury will participate in, will determine whether any wrongdoing occurred. The jury's verdict is advisory — Judge Gonzalez Rogers will make the final decision in both the liability and remedies phases. This unusual structure reflects the complexity of the claims: breach of charitable trust is an equitable matter that courts have historically resolved without juries, but Gonzalez Rogers opted to include a jury to provide an advisory perspective on the factual questions.

The two surviving claims are legally distinct but factually intertwined. The unjust enrichment claim argues that Altman and Brockman benefited financially from OpenAI's transformation from a nonprofit to a for-profit structure in ways that violated the terms under which Musk contributed resources and expertise to the organization. The breach of charitable trust claim argues that the restructuring itself violated the legal obligations that OpenAI's founders undertook when they established the organization as a nonprofit dedicated to the benefit of humanity.

"Scam Altman and Greg Stockman stole a charity. Full stop."

— Elon Musk, posting on X, April 27, 2026

The Stakes for OpenAI

The trial arrives at an extraordinarily sensitive moment for OpenAI. The company is preparing for what is expected to be one of the largest technology IPOs in history, with its valuation on private markets exceeding $852 billion. A trial that forces the disclosure of internal communications, board deliberations, and financial arrangements could complicate that process significantly — not because the legal outcome is necessarily threatening, but because the discovery process may surface information that investors, regulators, or the public find concerning.

OpenAI has been characteristically combative in its public posture. 'We can't wait to make our case in court where both the truth and the law are on our side,' the company wrote on its Newsroom account on Monday. 'This lawsuit has always been a baseless and jealous bid to derail a competitor.' Altman and Brockman were both present in the courtroom on Monday, a signal that the company intends to treat the proceedings as an opportunity to vindicate its conduct rather than a threat to be managed.

Musk's position is more complicated. He left OpenAI's board in 2018 after what has been described as a power struggle with Altman, and founded xAI five years later as a direct competitor. He subsequently merged xAI with SpaceX, creating a combined entity valued at over $1 trillion on private markets. The proximity of the trial to SpaceX's anticipated IPO — expected to be a record-setting offering — creates a potential conflict of interest that Gonzalez Rogers addressed directly during jury selection, expressing confidence that the selected jurors would respect the judicial process despite their views on Musk.

What the Trial May Reveal

The most consequential aspect of the trial may not be its legal outcome but its evidentiary record. The discovery process has already produced a significant volume of internal OpenAI communications, and the trial will likely surface additional materials that illuminate the decision-making process behind the company's transformation from a nonprofit to a for-profit structure. Those materials could include board meeting minutes, email exchanges between Altman and Musk, and financial projections that have never been made public.

For observers of the AI industry, the trial offers a rare window into the internal dynamics of the most influential AI organization in the world during the period when it made the decisions that shaped the current AI landscape. Whatever the legal verdict, the historical record that emerges from the proceedings will be studied for decades.