Elon Musk sues OpenAI and Sam Altman, claiming the company abandoned its nonprofit mission to serve as a for-profit venture benefiting billionaires instead of humanity.

Jury selection began Monday in Northern California federal court, where Musk seeks to prove OpenAI has abandoned its nonprofit mission under Altman's leadership. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will make the final decision on liability and remedies, informed by jury insights. If Musk prevails, Altman could lose his board seat and Brockman and Altman could be removed as officers; if Altman wins, OpenAI's mission could be lost.

Internal emails from 2015–2017 show the founders originally 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 leadership he had "had enough," and co-founders Sutskever and Brockman expressed concerns that Musk sought "unilateral absolute control over the AGI" and questioned Altman's commitment to the nonprofit mission.

OpenAI has characterized the lawsuit as a "baseless and jealous bid to derail a competitor" and stated Musk is using litigation as a delay tactic while his AI firm xAI (recently folded into SpaceX) races to catch up after ChatGPT's 2022 launch. Musk recently vowed to give all damages to OpenAI's nonprofit arm if he wins and posted on X that "Scam Altman and Greg Stockman stole a charity."