Elon Musk Sues OpenAI, Says It Broke Its Promise to Stay Nonprofit

Elon Musk went to court in Oakland, California on April 28, 2026, to testify in a lawsuit against OpenAI. Musk is one of the world's wealthiest people and helped start OpenAI back in 2015. Now he is suing the company and its leadership for what he calls abandoning the organization's original mission. During his testimony, Musk said OpenAI's shift from nonprofit to for-profit was "one of the greatest heists in history."

To understand what this case is about, you need to know what a nonprofit is: it is an organization set up to serve a public mission rather than make money for its owners. OpenAI was started as a nonprofit with a goal to develop artificial intelligence safely and for the benefit of humanity. Musk's lawsuit claims that the company broke that promise.

How Musk and Google's Larry Page Fell Out

Musk told the court something that had never been said under oath before: the story of why he and Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, stopped being friends.

Musk said that Page believed AI safety was not important—that it would be acceptable if artificial intelligence wiped out humanity, as long as the AI itself survived. Musk disagreed strongly and called Page's view "insane" in the courtroom.

The two men had been close friends. They used to spend time together in Palo Alto, and Page once said he would rather give his money to Musk than to a charity. But when Musk started recruiting top AI researchers to leave Google and join OpenAI, Page felt betrayed. The friendship ended, and they have not spoken since.

What Happened to OpenAI's Original Mission

The legal dispute comes down to a simple question: Did OpenAI keep its promise?

In 2017, OpenAI and Musk agreed that the company might eventually need to become for-profit in order to raise money and grow. However, Musk wanted OpenAI to merge with Tesla, the electric car company he runs. OpenAI refused. Instead, the company decided to partner with Microsoft, which gave it billions of dollars to help develop ChatGPT, the AI system that became famous in late 2022.

Musk argues that once Microsoft gave the company so much money, OpenAI stopped being a nonprofit in any meaningful way. The company now operates as a for-profit business, even though it technically has nonprofit status. He says OpenAI's leaders, especially CEO Sam Altman, chose money over their original mission.

Other Lawsuits and Larger Questions

This court case is not the only legal battle between Musk and OpenAI. Musk also owns a company called xAI, which has filed a separate lawsuit claiming that OpenAI stole its trade secrets. The cases are complicated and involve questions about what documents were lost or destroyed and who did what wrong.

The broader context here is that this lawsuit is about more than just what happened with one company. It raises important questions about how AI should be developed and who should control it. These questions matter to the entire tech industry, not just to Musk or OpenAI.

When new technologies create enormous amounts of wealth, tensions often arise between the idealistic reasons people started working on them and the pressure to make money. We saw this happen during the early internet boom in the 1990s, when nonprofit research projects became commercial companies. The difference with AI is that it is happening much faster, and the stakes feel higher because AI could affect many parts of society.

Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella, is expected to testify at the trial. His testimony matters because Microsoft invested so much money in OpenAI and ChatGPT. The trial will help decide what rules nonprofit AI organizations should follow if they want to become for-profit companies. This could set a pattern for how other AI labs operate going forward.

As more researchers and investors work on AI, questions about who owns it, who controls it, and what it should be used for will become more important. This courtroom in Oakland has become an unexpected place to work out some of those answers.