Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s Epic Fight Heads to Court

Artificial

Intelligence

A.I. Arms Race

Anthropic-White House Talks

Job Cuts on Wall Street

‘Jagged Intelligence’

Code Overload

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.

Supported by

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s Epic Fight Heads to Court

A jury trial that is set to start on Monday could shift the course of the A.I. race, with Mr. Musk seeking billions of dollars in damages from Mr. Altman’s OpenAI.

Listen

· 10:20 min

Share full article

Elon Musk, left, and Sam Altman were among the founders of OpenAI in 2015.

Amir Hamja/The New York Times; Mike Kai Chen for The New York Times

By

Cade Metz

Cade Metz has covered artificial intelligence for more than 15 years.

April 23, 2026,

12:31 p.m. ET

See more of our coverage in your search results.

Encuentra más de nuestra cobertura en los resultados de búsqueda.

Add The New York Times on Google

Agrega The New York Times en Google

On May 25, 2015, Sam Altman sent an email to Elon Musk proposing a “Manhattan Project for A.I.” He envisioned a Silicon Valley research lab that would build enormously powerful artificial intelligence and share it with the rest of the world “via some sort of nonprofit.”

Mr. Musk replied that evening, saying the idea was “probably worth a conversation.” Before the end of the year, the two tech entrepreneurs founded a nonprofit they called OpenAI, which would go on to launch the global A.I. boom

with the release of ChatGPT

.

But by the time OpenAI’s chatbot was created, Mr. Musk had left the organization after a power struggle with Mr. Altman and others at the lab. He

sued

OpenAI in 2024, claiming that Mr. Altman took advantage of his financial resources and breached the lab's founding agreement by putting commercial interests over the public good.

On Monday, jury selection is expected to begin in the federal courthouse in Oakland, Calif., for a trial to decide if Mr. Musk really was Sam Altman’s deep-pocketed dupe. The case will highlight the many

personal squabbles and esoteric arguments

that have driven A.I. development. Mr. Musk, Mr. Altman, and several other key industry figures, including Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, and Mira Murati, OpenAI’s former chief technology officer, are slated to testify in the trial, which is expected to last several weeks.

Mr. Musk is asking for more than $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, OpenAI’s primary partner. He is also asking the court to remove Mr. Altman from OpenAI’s board and unravel a shift the company recently made to

operate as a for-profit company

.

The trial’s outcome could upend the tech industry’s A.I. race. OpenAI, which has emerged as one of the most important tech companies in the world, could be crippled just as it appears to be heading toward one of the biggest initial public offerings in history. A win for Mr. Musk would also be a win for OpenAI’s competitors, from industry giants like Google to young companies like Anthropic, as well as international competitors such as China’s DeepSeek.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and

log into

your Times account, or

subscribe

for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?

Log in

.

Want all of The Times?

Subscribe

.

Related Content

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT