The Richest Grudge Match in History
Elon Musk is suing Sam Altman and OpenAI, claiming the company abandoned its nonprofit mission and misused his charitable donations. The trial, marked by technical glitches and personal tensions, centers on whether OpenAI's shift to a for-profit model violates its founding principles. The outcome could influence broader debates over profit, ethics, and control in the AI industry.
- ▪Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit but left in 2018, before the company introduced a for-profit arm and launched ChatGPT.
- ▪Musk is seeking to remove Altman from OpenAI's board, revert the company to a nonprofit, and reclaim up to $150 billion in alleged ill-gotten gains.
- ▪OpenAI and its legal team have called Musk's lawsuit hypocritical, noting he pushed for merging OpenAI with Tesla and later founded his own for-profit AI company, xAI.
- ▪Internal communications revealed Musk used Shivon Zilis, a former OpenAI board member and his romantic partner, to monitor the company.
- ▪Legal experts believe Musk is unlikely to win the case, as his past actions and statements undermine his claims about OpenAI's mission drift.
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TechnologySam Altman and Elon Musk Sure Dislike Each OtherThe trial between the CEOs makes the AI boom seem sordid and small.By Matteo WongIllustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Krisztian Bocsi / Bloomberg / Getty; Anna Moneymaker / Getty; U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.April 28, 2026 ShareSave Listen−1.0x+Seek0:008:15Elon Musk and Sam Altman are two of the most influential people in Silicon Valley, if not the world. Between the two of them, Musk and Altman run technology companies worth many trillions of dollars that promise to reshape civilization. But this morning, both sat under fluorescent lights in a courthouse in downtown Oakland, suffering through all manner of technical glitches as their respective attorneys kicked off the long-awaited trial in Musk v.
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