OpenAI accuses Musk

OpenAI says Elon Musk is trying a last-minute “legal ambush” weeks before a California trial over the company’s structure and Microsoft ties. (engadget.com) The case is Musk v. Altman in federal court in Northern California, filed on August 5, 2024, and CourtListener lists April 10, 2026 as the date of the latest known filing. Reuters, via CNBC, reported jury selection is set to begin on April 27, 2026. (courtlistener.com; cnbc.com) OpenAI’s latest filing says Musk is “sandbagging the defendants” by changing what he wants shortly before trial. Bloomberg, cited by Engadget, said Musk recently amended his complaint to route damages to OpenAI’s nonprofit arm and to seek Sam Altman’s removal as chief executive and board member. (engadget.com) Musk’s lawsuit centers on a basic corporate fight: whether OpenAI broke its original nonprofit mission by building a for-profit business and deepening its partnership with Microsoft. OpenAI and Microsoft deny wrongdoing, and OpenAI says Musk himself backed a for-profit structure years earlier. (engadget.com; openai.com) That dispute has widened into a fight over control of advanced artificial intelligence, the software field behind tools like ChatGPT. Reuters reported that OpenAI asked the California and Delaware attorneys general on April 6 to investigate what it called Musk’s “improper and anti-competitive behavior” ahead of trial. (cnbc.com) OpenAI says Musk co-founded the lab in 2015, left in 2018 after pushing to merge it with Tesla, and later started rival company xAI. In its public timeline, OpenAI says Musk has made repeated legal attempts to slow the company and points to court setbacks for some of his claims in January and February 2026. (cnbc.com; openai.com) Microsoft is in the case because Musk’s complaint targets the OpenAI-Microsoft relationship as part of the alleged shift away from the nonprofit mission. The company is also facing separate legal pressure over how OpenAI systems were trained, including a copyright suit filed on April 30, 2024 by newspaper publishers in New York federal court. (engadget.com; courtlistener.com) Sam Altman is under pressure beyond Musk’s suit. Reuters reported this month that Altman’s sister amended a civil lawsuit accusing him of sexual abuse from more than two decades ago, while Altman has denied the allegations and countersued for defamation. (yahoo.com) The legal fight has also turned more personal in recent days. CNBC reported on April 10 that police arrested a suspect after a Molotov cocktail attack on Altman’s home and threats against OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters, and Altman wrote that rhetoric around the company should “de-escalate.” (cnbc.com; msn.com) For now, the next hard date is April 27 in federal court. Unless the judge changes the schedule, the argument over whether OpenAI’s evolution broke its founding deal will move from filings into a jury trial. (courtlistener.com; cnbc.com)