Elon Musk arrives at the US District Court in Oakland, California, Tuesday, April 28, 2026. GODOFREDO A. VáSQUEZ / AP
Elon Musk and OpenAI boss Sam Altman faced off in a California federal court Tuesday, April 28, in a blockbuster trial that could have far-reaching consequences for the AI industry and oblige the ChatGPT maker to profoundly revamp its business.
The legal clash across the bay from San Francisco is widely seen as a battle of egos pitting the world's richest person against a startup Musk once backed and now trails in the booming AI sector.
At the heart of the case is an accusation by Musk that Altman drove OpenAI to become an industry juggernaut seeking to dethrone the likes of Google, Apple and Microsoft as a big tech profit maker, this betraying its nonprofit mission. Musk argues in his lawsuit that he was deceived about OpenAI's mission being altruistic.
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