Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI will go before a jury in March

Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI will go to trial after a US judge said there was evidence to support the billionaire’s case.

Musk sued OpenAI and its founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2024, alleging that they betrayed their original contractual agreements by pursuing profits rather than the nonprofit’s founding mission of developing artificial intelligence that benefits humanity.

Musk, who launched his own for-profit company xAI, was an early financial backer and co-founder of OpenAI. He resigned from the board in 2018 after his bid for the CEO position was rejected by the other co-founders, who nominated Altman for the position. Officially, Musk has cited a potential conflict of interest with Tesla’s AI development for self-driving cars.

Since leaving OpenAI, he has become an outspoken critic of the company’s move to a for-profit model, even making an unsolicited $97.4 billion offer to buy OpenAI in February 2025, which Altman rejected. OpenAI, founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab, first began to move away from its purely nonprofit roots in 2019 by creating a for-profit subsidiary with a “capable profit” model that caps returns for investors. This is designed to help OpenAI raise the massive amounts of funding it needs to scale and attract talent.

Musk’s lawsuit was unable to prevent OpenAI from becoming a non-profit, and in October 2025, the company completed a formal restructuring. The for-profit subsidiary became a public benefit corporation, with the original nonprofit retaining a 26% stake.

Musk is now seeking financial damages for what he says are “ill-gotten gains” from OpenAI. He says he invested about $38 million in early funding, as well as mentoring and credibility, based on assurances that OpenAI would remain a nonprofit.

An OpenAI spokesperson said Musk’s lawsuit is “baseless and part of his ongoing pattern of harassment.”

District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said her decision was based on evidence suggesting that OpenAI leaders had provided assurances that its original nonprofit structure would be maintained, as Musk alleges. A jury trial has been tentatively scheduled for March.

This article has been updated with comment from OpenAI.