Musk v. Altman OpenAI Trial Begins

What this countdown tracks

Jury selection in Musk v. Altman et al., the fraud and breach-of-contract suit Elon Musk filed against Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and OpenAI, scheduled to begin Monday 27 April 2026 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, sitting in Oakland before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. It is the first jury trial to put OpenAI's transformation from a non-profit research lab into a capped-profit and ultimately for-profit AI company directly in front of twelve jurors.

About the case

Musk co-founded OpenAI in December 2015 alongside Altman, Brockman, Ilya Sutskever and others. He committed roughly $45 million of the early funding while the entity operated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Musk left the OpenAI board in February 2018. He filed suit in California state court in February 2024, withdrew the action in June 2024, and refiled an expanded complaint in federal court in August 2024 — adding RICO, antitrust and fiduciary-duty counts and naming Microsoft as a co-defendant alongside the OpenAI corporate stack.

The complaint alleges Altman and Brockman induced Musk to bankroll OpenAI on the express promise that it would remain a safety-focused non-profit and that all material breakthroughs would be open-sourced — and that the 2019 capped-profit pivot, the 2023 Microsoft commercial alliance, and the 2024–25 for-profit reorganisation amounted to fraud in the inducement.

Stakes

• A jury verdict for Musk could force OpenAI to disgorge assets back to a non-profit structure.
• A defence verdict cements the legal validity of the for-profit conversion and de-risks the $500B-class valuations now attached to OpenAI equity.
• Discovery has already produced internal Slack messages, board minutes and emails between Altman, Brockman, Sutskever and Musk that are likely to surface publicly during trial.
• The trial date sits inside the GPT-6 launch window, putting OpenAI's most senior executives on the stand during a critical product cycle.

How to follow

PACER docket is 3:24-cv-04722-YGR. CourtListener mirrors the docket free of charge. Bloomberg, Reuters, The Information, the FT and the New York Times all assign reporters to courtroom benches in Oakland; transcripts are typically posted within 48 hours. Musk's counsel of record is Marc Toberoff; OpenAI is represented by Latham & Watkins.

Related countdowns

Watch the trial alongside the GPT-6 launch window, the NYT v. OpenAI copyright verdict and the SAG-AFTRA contract expiry — the three legal vectors most likely to redraw the AI industry's compliance perimeter in 2026.

FAQ

When does the trial start? Jury selection on 27 April 2026 in Oakland, California. Who is the judge? Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers (NDCA). What does Musk want? Disgorgement of OpenAI's for-profit assets back to a charitable trust, plus damages. Why does it matter? It is the first jury trial of OpenAI's non-profit-to-for-profit conversion.