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A yearslong legal brawl between Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman heads to court in Northern California on Monday in a dramatic showdown between two of the most high-profile names in the tech industry.
In his $134 billion lawsuit, Musk claimed that OpenAI, Altman and the company’s president, Greg Brockman, reneged on a vow they made to keep the artificial intelligence lab a nonprofit in perpetuity. OpenAI has since restructured so that it can operate a for-profit subsidiary, and it’s now valued at over $850 billion.
Musk and Altman were once close friends, and were among a group of techies who founded OpenAI in 2015 out of a shared concern over the potential power of AI and the need to advance it in ways that would benefit humanity.
Now they’re public enemies and bitter rivals, with Musk having started xAI as an OpenAI competitor in 2023 and recently merging it with SpaceX in a deal valuing the combined entity at $1.25 trillion. The trial lands as Musk is preparing to take SpaceX public in what will likely be a record IPO.
