Musk v. Altman Trial Closes: Jury to Decide OpenAI Charitable Trust Case
3 min readClosing arguments wrapped Thursday in the Musk v. Altman trial, sending a nine-person jury home for the weekend and into deliberations that begin Monday. The verdict could reshape the corporate identity of OpenAI, the most influential AI company in the world, and force the unwinding of a roughly $500 billion for-profit restructure.
How OpenAI Got to This Courtroom
The case centers on a question that has been simmering since OpenAI’s founding in 2015: was the company set up as a charitable mission, or as a vehicle that would later flip to a profit-driven enterprise? Elon Musk, an early backer who donated roughly $38 million in cash, rent, and Tesla Model 3 vehicles, says he was promised the former. OpenAI’s leadership, including chief executive Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman, argues those gifts came with no enforceable strings attached.
OpenAI created a for-profit subsidiary in 2019, took a $13 billion investment from Microsoft, and has since restructured into a capped-profit corporation now valued at hundreds of billions of dollars. Microsoft, named as a co-defendant, holds an estimated 27 percent stake worth roughly $135 billion.
What Happened in Court
Musk’s lead counsel Steven Molo told jurors that five witnesses, including Musk himself, former OpenAI board members, and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, had testified that Altman was untruthful during key moments of the company’s history. Molo asked the jury whether they would trust a wooden bridge “built on Sam Altman’s version of the truth,” according to coverage from CNBC.
Sarah Eddy, an attorney for the OpenAI defendants, rejected the framing. If Musk’s donations came with no specific promises, she argued, there was no charitable trust for him to enforce. Microsoft’s attorney Russell Cohen told jurors his client had no knowledge of any breach and could not have aided or abetted one.
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will receive the jury’s findings as advisory only. She will then make the binding decision on liability, and the remedies phase of the trial begins Monday alongside deliberations. Reporting from Axios notes the remedies on the table include potential damages and even a forced reversal of the for-profit restructure.
Why It Matters
The outcome will not just decide who is right about a decade-old set of promises. It could redraw the legal map for every AI lab that started as a nonprofit and later turned commercial. If the court accepts Musk’s theory of charitable trust, future founders may face new caution before mixing mission language with venture capital. If OpenAI prevails, the for-profit pivot becomes a tested playbook.
Either way, the timing is loaded. The verdict lands as governments in the United States and the European Union are rewriting the rules for frontier AI access, and as competitors like Anthropic and Google deepen their own commercial footprints. A ruling that forces Altman’s removal or rewinds the restructure would be the single largest governance event in the industry’s short history.