The bitter legal fight between Elon Musk and the leading artificial intelligence firm, OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, may come down to a few pages in one executive's personal diary.
"This is the only chance we have to get out from Elon," wrote Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president and a co-founder, in the fall of 2017. “Is he the glorious leader that I would pick?”
Brockman's diary entry is part of the thousands of pages of internal documents revealed in court since Musk, one of the original co-founders of OpenAI, sued the company, its chief executive Altman and Brockman in 2024.
Jury selection was completed on Monday in the Oakland, California, federal court for a high-stakes trial over the future of OpenAI, known for the ChatGPT chatbot, and perhaps the future of artificial intelligence itself.
Musk is seeking $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, one of its largest investors, according to a person involved in the case, with proceeds going to OpenAI's charitable arm.
He will try to convince the nine-person jury that Altman and Brockman conned him into investing in OpenAI, by straying from its founding mission as a nonprofit to focus on profit rather than helping society.
The presiding judge and lawyers for Musk and the OpenAI defendants questioned prospective jurors for possible bias.
Some of those questioned expressed negative views about Musk, with one saying "Elon doesn't care about people," but most said they could be fair. A nurse and a person who owns a painting company are among the jurors.
Opening statements are expected on Tuesday.
The documents offer a rare window into egos and personalities that shaped OpenAI as it evolved from a nonprofit research lab in Brockman's apartment to a tech giant worth more than $850 billion.
They also shed light on how the CEOs with the most power to shape generative AI think about the technology.
The trial risks complicating OpenAI's plans for a potential initial public offering by casting doubt on its leadership. A drumbeat of unflattering disclosures could also intensify Americans' growing pessimism about AI technology more broadly.
Musk accused OpenAI, Altman and Microsoft of betraying OpenAI's original mission as a nonprofit to benefit humanity by forming a for-profit entity in March 2019, 13 months after Musk left the OpenAI board, and exploiting his name and financial support to create a "wealth machine" for themselves.
He wants OpenAI to revert to a nonprofit, for Altman and Brockman to be removed as officers, and for Altman to be removed from its board, among other measures.
OpenAI countered that Musk is motivated by a compulsion to control OpenAI and prop up his own AI lab xAI, which he founded in 2023 shortly after OpenAI launched ChatGPT.
The company says Musk was involved in discussions to create OpenAI's new structure and demanded to be CEO. Microsoft, also a defendant, denies having colluded with OpenAI and says it teamed up with OpenAI only after Musk left.
"This lawsuit has always been a baseless and jealous bid to derail a competitor," OpenAI said in a post on X on Monday.
Musk disagreed. "I started it, funded it, recruited critical talent and taught them everything I know about how to make a startup successful FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD," he wrote. "Then they stole the charity."
Altman attended jury selection, while Musk did not.
Heavy hitters in Silicon Valley including Musk, Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella are expected to testify.
Shivon Zilis, a former OpenAI board member who is also mother to four of Musk's children, is likely to be a key witness, with OpenAI lawyers arguing that she funneled information about OpenAI to Musk.
OpenAI faces unprecedented competition from rivals including Anthropic, and is spending billions on computational resources. It is also preparing for a potential blockbuster IPO that could value the company at $1 trillion, Reuters has reported.
Musk's companies face similar pressures. His xAI, now folded into his rocket company SpaceX, trails far behind OpenAI in usage. SpaceX also plans to go public this year in what could be the biggest IPO ever.
According to court papers, Musk gave about $38 million of seed money to OpenAI between 2016 and 2020, mostly before he left the board.
In 2019, OpenAI restructured as a for-profit unit governed by the nonprofit, allowing it to accept money from outside investors.
Last fall, OpenAI overhauled its structure again to become a public benefit corporation, in which the nonprofit and other investors including Microsoft hold stakes. The nonprofit holds a 26% stake, plus warrants if OpenAI hits certain valuation targets.
Musk's lawyers calculated damages by multiplying OpenAI's valuation and the 50% to 75% portion of the nonprofit's stake they said is attributable to Musk's contributions.
Musk and Altman co-founded OpenAI with a goal of developing AI to benefit humanity and fend off rivals such as Google.
Altman approached Musk about the idea in May 2015, branding it the “Manhattan Project for AI,” court documents show.
Musk's involvement helped OpenAI land top researchers like now-former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever.
By mid-2017, Musk began questioning OpenAI's viability, at one point holding backpromised funds after clashing with Altman, Brockman and Sutskever, according to court filings. One source of tension was that Musk wanted to be CEO, emails show, which made other co-founders uneasy.
Around the same time, Brockman appeared frustrated by Musk's stance, and wondered if turning OpenAI into a profit-making venture could also make him rich.
“Financially, what will take me to $1B?” he wrote in his diary. “Accepting Elon's terms nukes two things: our ability to choose (though maybe we could overrule him) and the economics.”
By January 2018, Musk appeared to have given up. “OpenAI is on a path of certain failure relative to Google,” Musk emailed.
In late 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT.
Reuters
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