The Verdict That Could Unmake OpenAI: Inside the Musk vs. Altman Jury Deliberation

Correction (October 9, 2026): An earlier version of this article described the restructuring as worth $500 billion and said it let OpenAI raise $40 billion at a $300 billion valuation; those figures were out of date. OpenAI said in March 2026 it was worth $852 billion after raising $122 billion. It also wrongly said the nonprofit had no meaningful governance left (the nonprofit foundation controls the company), misstated OpenAI's defense, and said the judge had signaled she was weighing Altman's removal, which we could not verify. Those passages have been corrected. Separately, the jury returned its verdict the same day, finding in under two hours that Musk's claims were barred by the statute of limitations; the judge adopted the finding.

Today, a nine-person jury in Oakland, California begins deliberating on what may be the most consequential corporate lawsuit in Silicon Valley history. The question before them: did Sam Altman and Greg Brockman betray a promise — and if so, what should be done about it?

The short version: Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit, says he contributed roughly $38 million to its early development (other accounts put his donations closer to $44 million), then left the board in 2018. He claims Altman and Brockman engineered a for-profit restructuring — completed in October 2025, creating a public benefit corporation with Microsoft holding a 27% stake — that violated the charitable trust at the company's founding. The two civil claims are breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment. The jury's verdict is advisory; Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers makes the final call on liability.

What Musk Is Actually Asking For

Musk is not asking for damages for himself. He has renounced any personal financial benefit, and it matters to how you read the case. Instead, he wants the court to direct up to $134 billion from OpenAI and Microsoft to OpenAI's nonprofit foundation, unwind the October 2025 recapitalization, and remove Altman and Brockman from their leadership positions entirely. That last demand is the one that makes AI watchers nervous. Altman is not just the CEO of OpenAI — he's the operational center of gravity for every product the company ships, from ChatGPT to the APIs that power Microsoft Copilot and hundreds of third-party tools used by millions of people daily.

The closing arguments, which concluded May 14, covered familiar ground with new sharpness. Musk's lawyers accused OpenAI of deception, arguing that Altman and Brockman broke a promise to keep Musk's donations in a nonprofit and instead built a for-profit arm that made them wealthy. OpenAI's lawyers countered that no such promises were made, that Musk "never cared about the nonprofit structure," that he sued too late, and that he wanted to hurt OpenAI to help his own company, xAI. MIT Technology Review's trial coverage noted that both sides spent considerable energy attacking each other's credibility directly — a sign of how personally high the stakes feel for each man.

Why the Jury's Advisory Role Still Matters Enormously

The jury cannot directly force OpenAI to unwind its structure or fire its CEO. But their factual findings will shape the judge's order — Judge Gonzalez Rogers has said she would very likely follow the jury, and any remedies phase, including Altman's potential removal or a reversal of the restructure, would be decided by her alone. An advisory verdict that lands hard against OpenAI gives her significant cover to issue aggressive relief. A verdict for OpenAI largely ends the restructuring threat, though the judge could still act.

Either outcome has downstream effects far beyond the two men at the center of it. If the recapitalization is unwound, the corporate architecture behind the $122 billion raise at an $852 billion valuation OpenAI announced in March effectively collapses. Microsoft's stake becomes legally ambiguous. The nonprofit foundation, which already controls the company and holds roughly a quarter of it, would be left to sort out what its control means under a court-ordered structure. If Altman and Brockman are removed, every major enterprise customer, API partner, and researcher affiliated with OpenAI faces real uncertainty about product roadmap and safety oversight. One of the most widely used AI platforms in business would suddenly lack clear executive continuity.

The Bigger Story Behind the Courtroom Drama

Strip away the personal animosity — which both sides have occasionally allowed to become the story — and what this trial is really about is a structural question with no precedent: can a for-profit transformation of a nonprofit AI lab be challenged and reversed through charitable trust law? Courts have almost no case history here. The nonprofit-to-PBC conversion OpenAI executed in late 2025 was itself unprecedented in scale and in the degree to which it restructured obligations to funders and mission alike.

Whatever Judge Gonzalez Rogers decides, the decision will function as a legal template. Every AI lab that takes nonprofit seed money and scales toward commercialization — and there are several — will operate differently based on what comes out of Oakland. For Altman, winning means operational continuity and vindication of a bet he has spent a decade building. For Musk, winning means watching OpenAI's structure implode — and handing his own AI venture, xAI, a significant competitive tailwind in the resulting chaos. The jury deliberates today. The AI industry watches.

Sources: NPR · NBC News · MIT Technology Review · Tech Times · Al Jazeera · CNBC