Elon Musk's trial against OpenAI over nonprofit status begins this week, with jury selection starting Monday before US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.

Musk is attempting to prove that OpenAI, under Sam Altman, has abandoned its mission to remain a nonprofit in order to ensure that artificial intelligence serves humanity rather than just billionaires. If Musk wins, OpenAI's hopes of growing a for-profit arm that can fund the nonprofit could be dashed, and Altman risks losing his seat on OpenAI's board. Musk has vowed to give all damages to OpenAI's nonprofit arm if he wins.

Internal documents revealed in discovery show a divergence between Musk and OpenAI's founders over control. In 2015 emails, Musk and Altman agreed OpenAI should be structured so that 'the tech belongs to the world via some sort of nonprofit, but the people working on it get startup-like compensation if it works.' By September 2017, Musk told Altman, Brockman, Sutskever, and Teller that he had 'had enough,' after co-founders expressed concerns that the governance structure could give Musk 'unilateral absolute control over the AGI.'

The judge, not the jury, will make the ultimate decision in both the liability and remedies phases of the trial. OpenAI claims the litigation is a delay tactic while Musk's xAI—recently folded into SpaceX—races to catch up to OpenAI's lead following ChatGPT's launch in 2022.