OAKLAND, California — A federal jury in Oakland has begun deliberations in Elon Musk’s civil lawsuit against OpenAI, its top executives, and major investor Microsoft, after an eleven-day trial that featured extensive witness testimony and closing arguments. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on Monday delivered formal instructions to the nine-member panel, which is now reviewing evidence on Musk’s allegations that OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman, and affiliated corporate entities committed fraud and violated a foundational charitable understanding dating back to the organization’s creation in 2015. The case centers on claims that OpenAI’s leadership abandoned what Musk describes as an early commitment to operate as a non-profit research lab focused on open-source artificial general intelligence for the public benefit. OAKLAND, California — Musk, a co-founder and early funder of OpenAI, contends that subsequent multibillion-dollar investments, including a ten-billion-dollar capital injection from Microsoft, improperly transformed the project into a commercial enterprise closely aligned with a single corporate partner. His legal team argued that the defendants “stole a charity” by restructuring OpenAI into a market-driven business and cited legal concepts such as promissory estoppel and unjust enrichment, asserting he contributed tens of millions of dollars based on assurances that the technology would remain a public good. Lawyers for Altman, Brockman, OpenAI, and Microsoft rejected the fraud and trust claims, saying no binding founding contract existed and that a capped-profit structure and large-scale outside funding were necessary to secure computing resources, specialized chips, and engineering talent, leaving the jury to decide whether the restructuring broke any legal obligations.

Prepared by Emily Rhodes and reviewed by editorial team.