Musk vs. OpenAI Legal Battle Day One
Article by Sleepy.md
April 28, 2026, Oakland Federal Court, California.
There were no table-pounding rants as seen in Hollywood legal dramas, only a cold list of evidence, top-notch lawyers in suits, and a suffocating sense of oppression.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sat on opposite sides of the courtroom. Musk sat at the table in the center of the courtroom, gritting his teeth, his tongue pressing against the inside of his mouth, flipping through his notes. Altman, on the other hand, sat in the front row of the gallery with his arms crossed, looking serious, engaged in a quiet conversation with his lawyer.
This was the world's richest man attempting to legally dismantle the world's largest AI unicorn.
The prelude to the trial began with jury selection the day before.
In the East Bay of San Francisco, where techies abound, finding 9 ordinary individuals who could remain absolutely neutral toward Musk and ChatGPT was no easy task.
The candidates were questioned one by one: "Do you often use ChatGPT?" "Do you follow Musk on platform X?" "Have you bought Tesla or SpaceX stock?"
After a grueling 5-hour session, both sides exhausted their 5 preemptory challenges. The presiding judge, Ivonna Gonzalez Rogers, even uttered a blunt truth in court: "The reality is that many people don't like Musk."
This lawsuit, dubbed the "Trial of the Century" by the media, seemingly revolves around a hundred-billion-dollar claim and the reclassification of a nonprofit organization. However, behind these dry legal terms lies a more fundamental question.
When an open-source project that once held high the flag of "for the benefit of all mankind" transforms into a $852 billion commercial empire, did the original idealists part ways due to moral scruples, or did they split in anger after being defeated in a power struggle? Is this a belated quest for justice, or merely a titan of capital flipping the table after failing to taste the grapes?
Two Narratives
Once the trial officially commenced, the opening statements from both sides' lead counsels presented the jury with two starkly different narratives.
In Musk's lead counsel Steven Moro's narrative, this was a play of "The Noble Knight versus the Greedy Lord."
Moro deliberately avoided all obscure technical terms, citing OpenAI's 2015 founding charter and repeatedly emphasizing a concept: OpenAI's original intention was "for the good of all humanity," and it is "not a tool for getting rich."
In the accusation, Moro claimed that Ultraman and President Gregg Brockman "stole from a charity." He pointed the finger directly at Microsoft's $13 billion cumulative investment in OpenAI, believing that this move completely tore apart OpenAI's commitment to Musk and to the world.
To prove his innocence, Musk even promised that if he won the lawsuit and received the $100 billion claim, the money would be donated in full to OpenAI's non-profit foundation, with Musk himself not taking a penny.
However, in the words of OpenAI's Chief Legal Officer Bill Savitt, it's a completely different story. It's no longer a moral defense battle but a bare-faced "power struggle" and business retaliation after a failed palace coup.
"We are here because Musk didn't get his way." Savitt was blunt.
Addressing the jury, he said that Musk was the one who truly smelled the opportunity, saw the AI's business value, and tried to make it his own. At the time, Musk not only demanded absolute control of OpenAI, but even proposed merging OpenAI directly into Tesla.
Savitt pierced through Musk's "AI safety advocate" image. He pointed out that AI safety was never Musk's true priority, and Musk even scoffed at employees who were overly concerned about AI safety. In Savitt's view, Musk only turned back to sue OpenAI after founding the for-profit AI company xAI in 2023, purely out of business competition.
What's more interesting is Microsoft's subtle stance as a third party. Microsoft's lawyer, Russell Cohen, vigorously distanced the company, claiming that Microsoft has always been a "responsible partner at every step" and has done nothing wrong.
However, on the eve of the trial, OpenAI suddenly announced an update to its cooperation terms with Microsoft. Microsoft no longer has exclusivity; OpenAI's products can be deployed on other cloud platforms. This move is not only a self-defense against antitrust investigations but also appears to be a carefully orchestrated PR stunt, as OpenAI tries to prove in court that it is not a puppet of Microsoft.
Under the banner of morality, both sides concealed deep-seated commercial calculations.
Musk's Testimony
As the first heavyweight witness to take the stand, Musk sat in the witness box for a full two hours.
In the current environment of anti-elitism, Musk was acutely aware of how to empathize with the average juror. Instead of launching into esoteric discussions about AGI, he spent nearly half an hour recounting his "rags-to-riches" story. He talked about leaving South Africa at 17, working as a lumberjack in Canada, doing grunt work on a farm; he emphasized that he still works 80 to 100 hours a week, has no vacation home, no yacht.
"I enjoy working, I enjoy solving problems that make people's lives better," Musk tried to shape an image of a hardworking, practical, and uninterested in luxury mud-booted doer.
Then, he quickly shifted the conversation to the chilling AI crisis.
Musk predicted that as soon as next year, AI will be smarter than any human. He likened developing AI to raising a "very smart child," and when the child grows up, you can't control them at all, you can only pray that the values you instilled in them from a young age will take effect.
"We don't want a Terminator-like scenario." Musk warned, his tone very grave.
To prove the pure intentions behind founding OpenAI, Musk shared a story of his falling out with Google's co-founder Larry Page.
Musk recalled that they were once very close friends, often discussing the future of AI at length. But in one exchange, Musk found that Page was completely unconcerned about the risks of AI running amok. When Musk insisted that the survival of humanity must take precedence, Page retorted, accusing Musk of being a "speciesist."
This term is extremely harsh in the Silicon Valley context. It signifies that in the eyes of tech zealots like Page, silicon-based AI life is equal to carbon-based human life, with the former even representing a more advanced evolutionary direction.
Musk told the jury that at that moment, he thought Page was a lunatic. It was this extreme fear of Google potentially monopolizing and misusing AI technology that prompted him to fund the establishment of OpenAI as a "counterforce against Google."
This narrative logic is internally consistent and tragic, but not without its loopholes.
In court, Musk passionately declared, "If we allow them to steal from a charity, the entire foundation of American charitable donations will be destroyed." However, his own Musk Foundation was exposed for failing to meet the IRS-mandated 5% minimum charitable donation ratio for four consecutive years, with a funding shortfall of a staggering $421 million in just the year 2023 alone.
Even more contradictory is that a person deeply fearful of AI destroying humanity swiftly assembled a team in 2023 and founded the fully for-profit xAI, integrating it deeply into his business empire.
Is Musk's "for the greater good of humanity" merely a pure belief or a perfect excuse to undermine competitors? What do those intimate diaries and emails presented in court reveal about the inner world of Silicon Valley titans?
Diaries, Texts, and Silicon Valley's Dark Side
If courtroom statements are carefully crafted PR scripts for both sides, then internal communication records presented as evidence have directly exposed the underbelly of Silicon Valley.
The ace up Musk's sleeve was a private diary entry by OpenAI's CEO Greg Brockman in 2017. The diary bluntly stated, "Our plan: If we could make that money, it would be great. We've always thought, perhaps we should just go for profit."
As well as a more explicit query, "Financially, what can make me earn $1 billion?"
These black-and-white records instantly shattered OpenAI's early cultivated "pure research, no expectation of returns" non-profit image. It proved that five years before ChatGPT became a sensation, OpenAI's core management team was already contemplating how to monetize the technology and how to join the billionaire's club.
OpenAI's counterattack was equally devastating. They produced email records showing Musk's demand for sole control in 2017. The records revealed that Musk was not merely a generous donor who gives money without strings attached; he demanded absolute control over the potential for-profit OpenAI.
When Ultraman and Brockman refused to relinquish control, Musk's attitude did a 180-degree turn. In a 2018 email, Musk pessimistically asserted that OpenAI had a zero chance of success. Subsequently, he walked away, not only resigning from the board but also halting further financial support.
OpenAI's lawyers attempted to use this evidence to explain to the jury that Musk's departure was not due to any moral scruples or ideological disagreements, but purely because he believed the project was doomed and he couldn't get control, so he cut his losses.
In this intense battle of wits, a particular name has surfaced—Havik Zylist.
She is a former board member of OpenAI and also an executive at Musk's brain-machine interface company, Neuralink. Furthermore, she is the mother of Musk's three children. In text messages revealed during the trial, Zylist once proactively asked Musk if he needed her to remain within OpenAI to maintain the flow of information. Based on this, OpenAI alleges that during her board tenure, she was, in effect, a Musk-placed mole.
This tangled web of conflicting interests, personnel infiltration, and emotional entanglement, swirling beneath the noble slogans that aim to change the world, reveals a deep-seated desire for money, power, and control.
As the idealistic facade is peeled away layer by layer through courtroom evidence, will the outcome of this lawsuit indeed alter the course of the AI industry?
A Suspense Left for the Future
Regardless of the judge's final ruling, there are no true winners in this trial.
If Musk prevails, OpenAI will be forced to dismantle its intricate "profit cap" structure and revert to a purely non-profit organization, causing its staggering $852 billion valuation and planned IPO launch at the end of 2026 to evaporate instantly. However, this would not hinder capital from pouring furiously into the AI race, and Musk's very own xAI would lose one of its most formidable rivals.
If OpenAI emerges victorious, the legal loopholes allowing non-profits to transition into for-profits will be torn wide open. This means that future tech entrepreneurs could seamlessly operate under the guise of "non-profit," leveraging tax exemptions and a public moral halo to attract top talent and early-stage funding inexpensively, only to privatize and commercialize through complex equity structures once the technology achieves a breakthrough.
Viewing this trial in the context of the historical river of technological revolution, it is merely another footnote in business competition. Much like the late 19th century battle between Edison and Tesla over alternating and direct current, or the late 20th-century browser war between Microsoft and Netscape. The giants duel in court over the current rules of profit distribution.
The outcome in court cannot alter the objective laws of technological evolution. What truly decides the destiny of humanity is not the meticulously prepared arguments of lawyers but rather those GPU clusters distributed worldwide in data centers, humming ceaselessly, voraciously consuming power and data day and night.
Back in the Oakland courtroom. Mid-trial, the court's microphone and display screen suddenly experienced a brief technical glitch. Judge Rogers jokingly remarked, "What can I say? We are funded by the federal government."
The courtroom was filled with laughter. This self-deprecating interlude created a stark contrast with Silicon Valley giants who casually discuss trillion-dollar claims, human extinction, and terminator scenarios. In this surreal reality, the wheels of AI are ruthlessly crushing old norms of business ethics and legal boundaries, heading towards a future even its creator cannot foresee.
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