Musk v. OpenAI trial goes to jury as closing arguments cap weeks of tech drama

Closing arguments in the high-stakes Elon Musk v. OpenAI trial took place in Oakland federal court Thursday, capping a dramatic three weeks of testimony pitting the world's richest man against one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Musk's attorney Steven Molo continued his attack on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's credibility, asking the jury to imagine "you're on a hike, and you come upon one of those wooden bridges that you see on a trail, and it's over a gorge. There's a river that's 100 feet below and it looks a little scary, but a woman standing by the entry to the bridge says, ‘Don't worry, the bridge is built on Sam Altman's version of the truth.'"

"Would you walk across that bridge? I don't think many people would," he said.

Molo sparred directly with Altman this week during cross-examination, asking Altman whether he was trustworthy and citing numerous ex-OpenAI executives turned critics who all questioned his honesty, including Ilya Sutskever, Mira Murati and Dario and Daniela Amodei.

Musk is alleging breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment by Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman. He's seeking to oust Altman from the company, to undo OpenAI's for-profit transition - which was approved by the state attorneys general of California and Delaware - and upward of $132 billion that Musk said would be donated to OpenAI. The outcome of the trial could send shock waves through the booming artificial intelligence sector, potentially weakening OpenAI or cementing Altman and Brockman's control.

OpenAI attorney Sarah Eddy pushed back Thursday, saying Musk's suit was beyond the three-year statute of limitations, with Musk's donations already spent by 2020. Eddy argued that OpenAI's nonprofit still controls its for-profit public benefit corporation, and that Musk himself supported a for-profit conversion and control for himself.

Eddy said that Musk "never cared about the nonprofit structure. What he cared about was winning." Musk also previously sought to bring OpenAI under his for-profit company Tesla's control, and his xAI startup, an OpenAI competitor, is also a for-profit.

Meanwhile, Musk was in China Thursday, accompanying President Donald Trump and other tech titans such as Apple CEO Tim Cook and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. That's despite Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers saying earlier that Musk could have been recalled to testify again, though he was not called back to the stand.

The trial has spanned a who's who of Silicon Valley elites, with testimony from co-defendant Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella and OpenAI chairman and former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor. It was a familiar setting for Taylor, who is also the former chairman of Twitter and testified earlist this year in a separate ex-Twitter shareholder lawsuit against Musk, which Musk lost.

OpenAI competitor Google's DeepMind AI program has been cited repeatedly as a motivating force for Musk and Altman in their efforts to create a counterweight to the search engine giant. Musk testified that he lost faith in Google's stance on AI safety after co-founder Larry Page called Musk a "speciesist" for favoring humanity's survival over the hypothetical rise of an AI life form.

The trial has also featured more niche tech references, including almost daily testimony related to the competitive video game "Dota 2." The highly complex game includes over 120 different player-chosen characters, each with four or more abilities and a daunting learning curve. OpenAI created bots that defeated some of the best "Dota 2" players in the world in 2017 and then 2019, a moment described as a milestone in AI development and confirmation of the company's cutting-edge technology.

"Dota 2" is owned by Valve Corp., whose billionaire CEO, Gabe Newell, was also an early investor in OpenAI. Newell donated more than $20 million to OpenAI, according to documents released as evidence related to the trial.

Jurors will begin deliberations next week, but their decision will be only advisory. Judge Gonzalez Rogers will decide on the case, and if Musk wins, the court will begin a second phase related to damages later this month.

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This story was originally published May 14, 2026 at 7:13 PM.