Business

Musk vs Altman Trial Opens With Internal Documents That Rewrite the OpenAI Origin Story

By Erica Coleman · April 28, 2026

In the fall of 2017, OpenAI President Greg Brockman wrote a diary entry about Elon Musk. On Tuesday, a federal judge read it aloud in an Oakland courtroom.

“This is the only chance we have to get out from Elon,” Brockman wrote. “Is he the ‘glorious leader’ that I would pick?”

That entry — part of thousands of pages of internal communications that have been unsealed as evidence — captures the private reality of the world’s most consequential technology company during the period Musk now claims he was being manipulated and deceived. The nine-person jury seated Monday in the case heard opening statements Tuesday in what amounts to a trial not just about a legal dispute, but about who gets to define what artificial intelligence was supposed to be — and who it belongs to now.

Musk filed the lawsuit in August 2024, claiming that Altman and Brockman defrauded him when they turned OpenAI from the nonprofit he helped fund into a for-profit venture that is now valued at more than $850 billion. He gave approximately $44 million to OpenAI in its early years — money he says he donated to a charity for humanity, not a corporation for shareholders. He is seeking what his team has described as roughly $130 billion in damages, though he has since asked that any award flow back into OpenAI’s nonprofit foundation rather than to himself.

OpenAI’s counter-narrative, supported by the documents being admitted as evidence, tells a different story. The company says Musk was aware of and involved in discussions about creating a for-profit structure as early as 2017. It says he left the board not because he disagreed with the direction, but because he demanded to be made CEO and was refused. And it says his lawsuit is motivated by competitive jealousy, not principle — that his own xAI company, which trails far behind OpenAI in usage, benefits from any legal damage inflicted on its rival.

Those competing narratives will now be tested in open court, with internal documents as the evidence and witnesses who include not only Musk and Altman but Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Shivon Zilis — a former OpenAI board member who is the mother of four of Musk’s children and who OpenAI’s lawyers allege funneled inside information to him.

The trial is divided into two phases. The liability phase — running until approximately May 21 — determines whether any wrongdoing occurred. If the jury finds liability, a second remedies phase determines what Musk gets. The judge has the final say, with the jury serving in an advisory role.

The stakes exceed the dollar figure. OpenAI is preparing for a blockbuster IPO it expects will value the company at more than $1 trillion. If Musk wins his core demand — an unwinding of OpenAI’s conversion to a for-profit public benefit corporation — that IPO could be thrown into chaos. If OpenAI wins, Musk’s legal leverage over the company that created ChatGPT disappears entirely.

Altman attended jury selection on Monday. Musk did not. During the selection process, several prospective jurors expressed sharply negative views of Musk — one called him “greedy” and “a piece of garbage” in their pre-questionnaire form. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers declined to dismiss most of them, telling Musk’s lawyers that disliking him was not disqualifying.

The Brockman diary entry may ultimately matter less as evidence than as a lens. It was written the year before Musk left the board, by a man who worked alongside him daily. It describes a colleague who expected to be treated as a leader by virtue of his power rather than the merit of his ideas. Whatever Musk intended when he helped found OpenAI, the people around him were already thinking about how to get out from under his influence a full year before he left.