Musk vs. Altman Kicks Off This Week. Hard Reset Will Be There.
We’ll be providing extensive coverage of the trial and the hoopla around it.
Elon Musk v. Sam Altman, a civil case pitting the world’s wealthiest man against the artificial intelligence industry’s (current) kingpin, begins this week. I’ll be in Oakland covering the first week of the trial for Hard Reset.
If you’re just catching up: Musk’s initial lawsuit, filed in 2024, was expansive. It included dozens of claims against Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman. That list of claims has since been substantially narrowed to two items, which are breach of charitable trust as well as unjust enrichment.
The stakes are still quite high. Musk is suing for up to $134 billion in combined damages from OpenAI and codefendant Microsoft, which has maintained a partnership with OpenAI since 2019. Musk also wants Altman and Brockman to be booted from OpenAI’s board.
Musk, an OpenAI board member himself until his resignation in 2018, claims that he helped fund OpenAI because he was under the impression that it would not become a fully for-profit entity. Altman, Brockman, and others took advantage of Musk’s financial generosity during OpenAI’s early days, Musk alleges. OpenAI has countered that Musk himself chatted with other board members about possible for-profit pivots; of course, he also now runs xAI, his own for-profit AI company. Both SpaceX (which just merged with xAI) and OpenAI are flirting with going public.
Perhaps realizing that a jury might not be inclined to give a soon-to-be trillionaire and/or his own for-profit AI company another hundred-billion dollars, Musk recently filed an amended notice of remedies pledging that he would direct all damages to OpenAI’s nonprofit arm—not himself or xAI. Should Musk’s claims fall short, it will be a major public relations coup for Altman, whose deceptive behavior was recently the subject of a lengthy New Yorker investigation.
On the Core Memory podcast, Altman said that he thinks Musk’s lawsuit is “insane,” but that he’s “happy to explain all this to the world and have this chapter behind us.” Brockman, who appeared on the same podcast, said that the trial is “a real opportunity for people to understand what truly motivates us, what we truly stand for.” To be fair, I’m not sure what else they could say at this stage, but they’re certainly projecting certitude about the trial’s outcome.
For his part, Musk has spent most of the last week complaining on X about the Southern Poverty Law Center, the subject of the Trump Administration’s latest manufactured controversy. I assume Musk’s attorneys are keeping a close eye on his erratic musings, and would prefer he distract himself with unfounded theories about the SPLC, which lessens the possibility that he publicly weighs in on the trial.
Jury selection is set for Monday, April 27, at a federal courthouse in Oakland, California. It’s possible jury selection continues into Tuesday, depending on how long it takes to lock in nine jurors who can convincingly state that they will be impartial about a squabble between widely-known and disliked tech oligarchs. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is overseeing the case, and has divided it into two parts. The “liabilities” portion of the trial is expected to be every Monday through Thursday until mid-May, at which point the jury will issue an advisory verdict. Gonzalez Rogers—who’s overseen other Big Tech-focused cases—will make the final call on whether to follow the advisory verdict. If the jury finds OpenAI liable, and Gonzalez Rogers agrees, there will be a remedies phase starting in mid-May.
Regardless of what the jury and Gonzalez Rogers decide, it is a near-guarantee that Musk v. Altman will be embarrassing for the plaintiff, for the defense, and for many of the witnesses. Depositions, text messages, emails, and even journal entries from the discovery phase of the lawsuit frequently proved to be absurd. I previously summarized the most interesting findings, which you can read below.
Musk, Altman, and Brockman are all expected to take the stand. So is Jared Birchall, who’s Musk’s top advisor; Mira Murati, who’s OpenAI’s former CTO; Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft; and Shivon Zilis, Musk’s kinda-sorta romantic partner and former OpenAI board member.
Given the star power of the witness list and the case’s wide range of potential outcomes, I expect the scene around the courthouse to be a circus. There will be lots of media in attendance, myself included. I’ll be delivering updates for Hard Reset, likely on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. (It’s possible that shifts around depending on when jury selection is completed.) I’ll also post updates on Bluesky and maybe X, if you’re so inclined. And for anyone who wants to chat about the trial, I’m ajshultz.13 on Signal.
More soon!
"Should Musk’s claims fall short, it will be a major public relations coup for Altman, whose deceptive behavior was recently the subject of a lengthy New Yorker investigation."
Karen Hao's 2025 book "Empires of AI" deserves a shout-out here as well. I imagine the New Yorker piece includes some more recent updates, but it's hard to imagine that the principals have changed much in the past year...