Jury deliberations to begin in OpenAI nonprofit trial after Musk skips closing for Beijing

At a glance:

• Jury deliberations begin Monday in the Musk v. Altman trial over OpenAI's nonprofit-to-profit conversion, with Musk absent — attending Trump's Beijing state visit instead.
• Musk is seeking up to $134 billion in disgorgement, alleging that OpenAI's 2025 recapitalisation at a $350 billion valuation breached the charitable trust under which he donated roughly $38 million between 2015 and 2017.
• The verdict, while technically advisory, could set a precedent for how courts police nonprofit-to-profit conversions by AI labs that have become among the world's most valuable private companies.

The closing of the largest civil trial in Musk's life

Three weeks of testimony in Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers's Oakland courtroom came to a close on Thursday afternoon, with closing arguments delivered in Musk v. Altman — the largest civil trial in Elon Musk's life. The nine-person jury was sent home for the weekend and will begin deliberations Monday, tasked with deciding whether OpenAI's leadership breached the charitable trust that underpinned the lab's early funding.

The case has drawn an extraordinary cast of Silicon Valley figures to the witness stand, including Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Musk himself. Two competing narratives have emerged from the evidence: Musk's counsel argued that Altman and Brockman "stole a charity," while the defence countered that Musk simply "didn't get his way at OpenAI."

Musk's absence at closing

Elon Musk was not present for the closing arguments. His attorney issued an apology to the jury on his behalf, explaining that Musk was in Beijing as part of Donald Trump's state-visit delegation. During the trip, Musk sat alongside Apple CEO Tim Cook, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink for the parallel diplomatic visit.

The decision to skip the closing of the largest civil trial in his life appears to have been a calculated legal and political judgment by Musk's team. His lawyers evidently concluded that the optics of absenting himself from a Trump-led foreign trip would be less damaging than missing the final arguments in a case that could reshape the governance of AI laboratories worldwide.

$134 billion in disgorgement and OpenAI's future structure

At the heart of the case is OpenAI's 2025 recapitalisation, which converted the lab from its original nonprofit structure into a more conventional capped-profit entity. The most recent valuation reading puts the company at $350 billion. Musk is seeking up to $134 billion in disgorgement — none of which would flow to him personally. On the stand, Musk renounced any personal benefit, framing the requested relief as a return to OpenAI's original nonprofit foundation.

Beyond damages, Musk has asked the court to remove both Sam Altman and Greg Brockman from their leadership roles and to unwind the recapitalisation entirely. He has framed the case as a precedent-setting question: whether founders can pull a charity into a commercial vehicle without the consent of the original donors who funded its early research.

The competing factual claims

OpenAI's defence rested on a narrower set of factual arguments. The company contended that Altman and Brockman never made enforceable commitments to Musk about OpenAI's corporate structure, that Musk's donations were spent on the research mission as agreed, and that the recapitalisation followed the legal procedure that California's attorney general had approved.

Microsoft, listed as a co-defendant on an aiding-and-abetting theory, argued separately that its $13 billion in cumulative investment was the very capital that kept OpenAI alive long enough to build the technology Musk now wants returned. CEO Satya Nadella's trial testimony framed the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership as the company's defence against becoming, in his words, "the next IBM."

One striking piece of trial evidence cut against OpenAI's narrative: Greg Brockman's 2017 personal journal, which described OpenAI's nonprofit framing as "a lie."

How the verdict could land

Two procedural features of the trial will shape how any verdict plays out. First, the jury is technically advisory; Judge Gonzalez Rogers retains final authority on remedies and has indicated she will likely follow the jury's reading but is not bound by it. Second, the trial is structured in two phases — liability is decided first, with remedies addressed in a separate proceeding where the judge alone determines what disgorgement, structural relief, or unwinding follows from any liability finding.

A jury finding for Musk on Monday or Tuesday does not, by itself, remove Altman from his job. But the verdict will signal whether jurors believe nonprofit-to-profit conversions of the kind OpenAI executed represent a category of corporate behaviour the courts should police. Both sides, with rare agreement, have described the case as one that will shape the next decade of governance for AI labs that began as charities and have ended up as some of the most valuable private companies in the world.

Anthropic and other AI startups with similar nonprofit origins have been watching the proceedings closely. The remedies phase, if reached, would be heard by Gonzalez Rogers alone in a separate proceeding later this year.