OAKLAND, California: Deliberations begin Monday in the blockbuster trial pitting Elon Musk against AI giant OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, whom Musk accuses of abandoning the company’s founding mission.
The three-week trial in Oakland, outside San Francisco, has seen a parade of Silicon Valley titans take the stand, with Musk arguing that OpenAI’s pivot to a profit-driven business betrayed its original nonprofit mandate.
The world’s richest person is suing OpenAI over its transformation from a scrappy nonprofit into the $850 billion juggernaut behind ChatGPT.
If successful, Musk’s lawsuit could deal a lethal blow to OpenAI, which helped trigger the AI revolution with its release of ChatGPT in 2022 and is now one of the world’s most valuable private companies.
Musk claims Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman improperly used a $38 million donation he had intended to sustain OpenAI as a research lab devoted to developing AI for the benefit of humanity.
