Jury selection began Monday in Oakland, California, in a high-stakes legal battle between billionaire Elon Musk and artificial intelligence company OpenAI, which Musk co-founded and now accuses of betraying its founding pledge to develop AI for the benefit of humanity rather than private profit. The trial, held in a courthouse across San Francisco Bay from the city where OpenAI is headquartered, sets the world's richest person against a company he once financially backed and today competes with directly in the fast-growing AI sector.

Court filings describe how OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman persuaded Musk to become a co-founder and early backer of the lab in 2015, on the premise that its technology "would belong to the world." Musk poured millions of dollars into the nonprofit before eventually departing. OpenAI later established a commercial subsidiary, arguing that the enormous costs of building data centres — running into hundreds of billions of dollars — made a purely charitable structure unworkable. Microsoft invested billions of dollars in the company, and its chief executive Satya Nadella is among those scheduled to testify. Today, OpenAI operates a hybrid structure in which a nonprofit foundation retains oversight of a for-profit arm.

Musk argues that he was deceived about the organisation's altruistic mission and is calling for OpenAI to revert to a pure nonprofit, as well as seeking the removal of Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman. He had originally sought up to $134 billion in damages but has since renounced any personal benefit, pledging to redirect any award back to the OpenAI nonprofit. OpenAI has pushed back forcefully, arguing that the real cause of the split was Musk's pursuit of absolute control over the company. "This case has always been about Elon generating more power and more money for what he wants," the company wrote in a recent post on X, adding that the lawsuit is "a harassment campaign driven by ego, jealousy and a desire to slow down a competitor." The startup also noted that shortly after launching his own AI venture in 2023, Musk publicly called for a six-month moratorium on advanced AI development.

Presiding Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will deliver a ruling by mid-May, guided by but not bound by the advisory jury's findings; she has reserved the right to determine any remedies independently. Beyond the personal feud between Musk and Altman, the case touches on a broader and unresolved question in the AI industry: whether transformative technology developed with public-interest goals can — or should — be redirected toward commercial ends once the scale of investment required becomes clear. The outcome could have significant implications for how AI companies structure their governance and accountability going forward.