Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI will go to court after a US judge says there is evidence to support the billionaire’s case.
Musk sued OpenAI and co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2024, claiming they breached their original contractual agreement by pursuing profit instead of the nonprofit’s founding mission of developing AI to benefit humanity.
Musk, who started his own commercial company xAI, was an early financial backer and co-founder of OpenAI. Altman resigned from the board in 2018 after the company’s other co-founders rejected his nomination to be CEO. Musk has publicly cited Tesla’s own AI development for self-driving cars as a potential conflict of interest.
Since leaving OpenAI, he has been a vocal critic of the company’s move to a for-profit model, and in February 2025 made an unsolicited $97.4 billion acquisition offer for OpenAI, which Altman rejected. Founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research organization, OpenAI began to break away from its pure nonprofit roots in 2019 by creating a for-profit subsidiary with a “capped-profit” model that limits returns to investors. This was designed to help OpenAI raise the significant funding needed to scale and attract top talent.
Musk’s lawsuit failed to prevent OpenAI from becoming a nonprofit corporation, and the company completed its formal restructuring process in October 2025. The for-profit branch became a public benefit corporation, with the original nonprofit holding 26% of the stock.
Musk is now seeking monetary damages, alleging “unjust enrichment” by OpenAI. He says he has invested about $38 million in early funding, guidance and credibility, with assurances that OpenAI will remain nonprofit.
An OpenAI spokesperson told TechCrunch that Musk’s lawsuit is “baseless and part of his ongoing pattern of harassment.”
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District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said her ruling was based on evidence that suggested OpenAI’s leaders were committed to keeping the original nonprofit organization in line with Musk’s claims. A jury trial is tentatively scheduled for March.
This article has been updated with comment from OpenAI.
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