Musk sues Altman in Oakland

Jury selection began Monday in Oakland in Elon Musk’s civil case against Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, OpenAI and Microsoft over OpenAI’s shift away from its original nonprofit structure. (nbcnews.com) (usnews.com) Musk says OpenAI’s leaders took his money, time and advice on the premise that the lab would serve humanity, then built a profit-seeking company instead. OpenAI says Musk is rewriting the company’s history after leaving in 2018. (cnbc.com) (nbcnews.com) The case narrowed just before trial. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers dismissed Musk’s fraud claims at his request, leaving breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment for jurors. (usnews.com) (finance.yahoo.com) Musk is seeking roughly $150 billion in damages, with the money slated for OpenAI’s charitable arm rather than for him personally, according to Reuters. He also wants OpenAI’s for-profit conversion unwound and Altman and Brockman removed. (finance.yahoo.com) (cnbc.com) The dispute reaches back to 2015, when Musk and Altman helped found OpenAI as a nonprofit research lab. The fight now centers on whether later restructuring violated promises made at the start. (nbcnews.com) (cnbc.com) OpenAI says the conversion was necessary to raise the capital needed to build advanced artificial intelligence systems. The company says Musk once agreed that a for-profit structure was needed and even pushed to fold OpenAI into Tesla. (nbcnews.com) The trial is scheduled to run about four weeks, and witnesses could include Musk, Altman, Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella, board members and top artificial intelligence researchers. (nbcnews.com) OpenAI completed a restructuring in October that left its for-profit business reporting to a nonprofit foundation. CNBC reported the company is now valued above $850 billion and is targeting a potential public offering later this year. (nbcnews.com) (cnbc.com) Musk now runs rival AI company xAI, adding a direct business conflict to a case already shaped by a personal split between two former OpenAI leaders. The testimony in Oakland is expected to dig into emails, governance choices and fundraising decisions behind that break. (cnbc.com) (usnews.com) For now, the courtroom question is narrower than the public feud: whether OpenAI’s leaders broke duties tied to its nonprofit mission when they built the company that now controls ChatGPT. (nbcnews.com) (finance.yahoo.com)