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April 28, 2026, 10:07 a.m. ET
Live Updates: Blockbuster OpenAI Trial Pits Elon Musk Against Sam Altman
Opening statements are expected on Tuesday in Elon Musk’s legal showdown with Sam Altman’s OpenAI, a case that could have far-reaching consequences for the future of artificial intelligence.
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Elon Musk has sued OpenAI, which he cofounded with Sam Altman, right, and others.
Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times, Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
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Pinned
Updated
April 28, 2026, 10:01 a.m. ET
Cade Metz
and
Mike Isaac
Reporting from Oakland, Calif.
Here’s the latest.
Elon Musk’s legal team will start arguing the tech mogul’s case against OpenAI on Tuesday, in a
blockbuster trial
that could reshape one of the industry’s most important companies and shift the course of the artificial intelligence race.
Mr. Musk, Sam Altman and other A.I. researchers founded OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015, vowing to freely share its technology with the rest of the world. But Mr. Musk left the start-up in 2018 after a power struggle with Mr. Altman — and before the public launch of ChatGPT in 2022 catapulted OpenAI to commercial success.
Mr. Musk
sued
OpenAI in 2024, claiming that the nonprofit he funded with his own large donations took advantage of his financial resources. He also argued that OpenAI breached its founding agreement by putting commercial interests over the public good.
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 the start-up’s board and stop a shift the company recently made to
operate as a for-profit company
.
OpenAI and Mr. Altman deny Mr. Musk’s claims that they abandoned the nonprofit’s mission. They have filed court documents that show Mr. Musk also tried to shift the start-up toward commercial purposes before his exit.
The trial’s outcome could upend the A.I. landscape. OpenAI, which has emerged as one of the most important tech companies in the world, could be hobbled just as it appears to be heading toward one of the biggest initial public offerings in history. A win for Mr. Musk, who has his own for-profit lab, xAI, 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.
If Mr. Musk loses, Mr. Altman will likely solidify control of a company that has become synonymous with corporate dysfunction. And OpenAI, which is now valued at about $730 billion, will be free to pursue a data center expansion plan that could cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
(The New York Times has
sued OpenAI
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