Musk accuses OpenAI of hijacking his $38M “safe, open AI” nonprofit into a closed AGI cash machine for Altman and Microsoft; a jury now weighs trust, timing and power.
Summary
- Attorneys for Elon Musk and OpenAI delivered closing arguments Thursday in a federal courtroom in Oakland, capping a three‑week trial over whether OpenAI betrayed its founding promise to build safe, open AI as a nonprofit.
- Musk’s lawyer cast the case as a straightforward breach of charitable trust, telling jurors that Sam Altman “cannot be trusted” and that Musk’s roughly $38 million in early funding was diverted into a for‑profit AGI play that enriched OpenAI insiders and Microsoft.
- OpenAI’s team countered that Musk “abandoned” the nonprofit in 2018, attached no binding conditions to his donations, and only sued after launching rival firm xAI, framing the lawsuit as sour grapes and an attempt to regain control over the AI race.
In his closing for Musk, attorney Steven Molo told the nine‑person jury that “the credibility of Sam Altman is central to this case,” arguing that “if you doubt him, if you do not find him credible, they cannot prevail. It’s that straightforward.” He walked jurors back through testimony from former insiders and board members to claim that Altman and co‑founder Greg Brockman quietly shifted OpenAI from a nonprofit charter to a profit‑maximizing structure while still marketing themselves as altruistic stewards of “safe AI for humanity.”
Musk’s side: “You cannot trust Sam Altman”
Molo reiterated that Musk donated around $38 million on the understanding that OpenAI would remain a charitable vehicle for open‑source AI research, telling the jury, “The evidence proves Elon donated those funds for a specific charitable purpose,” namely “to create a nonprofit for the development of safe AI that would be open‑source when applicable.” He accused Altman, Brockman and Microsoft of “unjust enrichment,” pointing to the $13 billion Microsoft investment and OpenAI’s 2025 recapitalization as proof that Musk’s seed money had been leveraged into a closed, massively valuable AGI platform without his consent.
Musk’s side has floated damages figures as high as $134 billion in earlier filings, but in court Molo tried to emphasize structural remedies: ousting Altman and Brockman, unwinding the 2025 deal, and forcing “ill‑gotten gains” back into an OpenAI foundation. That line prompted a sharp rebuke from Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in a sidebar, after she suggested Molo was misleading jurors into thinking Musk was “not seeking any money,” even though his team has repeatedly quantified the alleged wrongful gains.
OpenAI’s side: “He never cared about the nonprofit — he cared about winning”
OpenAI’s lead trial lawyer Sarah Eddy told jurors that Musk’s narrative is fiction, arguing he “effectively abandoned OpenAI” when he left in 2018 and never conditioned his donations on a permanent nonprofit structure. Eddy reminded the jury that multiple witnesses testified Musk did not insist on specific governance guarantees and instead pushed to take control himself, citing Sam Altman’s account that Musk wanted “90% of OpenAI” and to be able to pass it to his children if he died.
“He never cared about the nonprofit structure,” Eddy said. “What he was really interested in was winning,” casting the lawsuit as retaliation after Musk launched competing AI company xAI and fell behind in the commercial race. OpenAI’s filings also stress timeliness: the defense argues Musk waited too long and “cannot claim harms that occurred before August 2021,” with Judge Gonzalez Rogers writing that if jurors agree he missed the statute of limitations, she is “highly” likely to direct a verdict for the defendants.
Microsoft’s attorney Russell Cohen echoed that theme, telling jurors the company had “no awareness” it was participating in a breach of charitable trust and simply invested $13 billion into a for‑profit structure that regulators and OpenAI’s board had already accepted.
The nine‑member jury — six women and three men — will begin deliberations Monday, delivering an advisory verdict that Judge Gonzalez Rogers can adopt or override when she rules on liability and remedies. If she sides with Musk and orders a reversal of OpenAI’s for‑profit pivot, the decision could blow up its planned IPO and rewrite how AI labs structure nonprofit “foundations” around commercial AGI engines; if she rejects his claims on timing or trust grounds, it will be a judicial stamp of approval on the hybrid nonprofit/for‑profit architecture the rest of the industry is now copying.
