Tech Billionaires Musk, Altman To Clash In Court This week

Tech titans Elon Musk and Sam Altman will square off in court this week over allegations that Altman’s OpenAI abandoned its founding mission in pursuit of profit.

Musk was an early investor in OpenAI when it launched as a nonprofit in 2015, but he eventually cut ties with the company in 2018 and launched a competing AI project in 2023. Although OpenAI launched as a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, it has evolved into a for-profit entity now valued at $852 billion, the Associated Press reported.

Musk sued OpenAI in 2024, claiming that the company had violated its agreement with him and abandoned it’s mission. The AP reported that Musk originally invested $38 million in OpenAI from December 2015 through May 2017. The lawsuit first sought $100 billion in damages, but the AP noted that after a series of pre-trial rulings Musk is now seeking unspecified damages that would go to fund OpenAI’s nonprofit arm.

The lawsuit paints Musk as a person concerned about AIG and its potential impact on humanity. “But where some like Mr. Musk see an existential threat in AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), others see AGI as a source of profit and power,” the lawsuit states.

OpenAI, however, has said that the lawsuit is little more than sour grapes and that Musk recognized the need for the company to become a for-profit relatively early on.

The company wrote that by 2017, company officials knew it would need to become a capitalistic venture: “We all understood we were going to need a lot more capital to succeed at our mission—billions of dollars per year, which was far more than any of us, especially Elon, thought we’d be able to raise as the nonprofit.”

The company alleges that Musk demanded “majority equity, absolute control, and to be CEO of the for-profit.” The company also alleges that he tried to force it to merge with Tesla at one point.

OpenAI states that as the for-profit evolution happened a power struggle over the company ensued. It ended in 2018 when Musk resigned as co-chair.

“Elon soon chose to leave OpenAI, saying that our probability of success was 0, and that he planned to build an AGI competitor within Tesla. When he left in late February 2018, he told our team he was supportive of us finding our own path to raising billions of dollars,” the company stated.