{"id":235255,"date":"2026-04-24T15:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T19:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/24\/what-you-need-to-know-as-elon-musks-lawsuit-against-sam-altman-begins\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T16:30:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T20:30:17","slug":"what-you-need-to-know-as-elon-musks-lawsuit-against-sam-altman-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/24\/what-you-need-to-know-as-elon-musks-lawsuit-against-sam-altman-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"What you need to know as Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman begins"},"content":{"rendered":"

What you need to know as Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman begins<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/ai\/what-you-need-to-know-as-elon-musks-lawsuit-against-sam-altman-begins-191500726.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-04-24 15:15:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.engadget.com<\/a><\/p>\n

In a few short days, jury selection will begin in the long-awaited Musk v. Altman case. At the end of that process, an Oakland federal court will task nine regular people with deciding if OpenAI defrauded Elon Musk when it announced, and recently completed, its reorganization to become a more traditional for-profit business. More than just being the venue where two billionaires will air their grievances against one another in public, the trial has the potential to reshape the AI industry.<\/p>\n

How did we get here?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Musk first sued OpenAI in 2024, but the seed of the dispute was planted when Sam Altman emailed the billionaire on the evening of May 25, 2015. \u201cBeen thinking a lot about whether it\u2019s possible to stop humanity from developing AI. I think the answer is most definitely not,\u201d Altman wrote at the time. \u201cIf it\u2019s going to happen anyway, it seems like it would be good for someone other than Google to do it first. Any thoughts on whether it would be good for [Y Combinator] to start a Manhattan Project for AI?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably worth a conversation,\u201d Musk responded a couple of hours later. That same year, OpenAI announced itself to the world, with Altman and Musk as co-chairs of the new joint venture. \u201cOpenAI is a nonprofit artificial intelligence research company. Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is mostly likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return. Since our research is free from financial obligations, we can better focus on a positive human impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

If we\u2019re to believe OpenAI\u2019s telling of the events that followed, by 2017, almost everyone at the company, including Musk, agreed that a for-profit entity \u201chad to be part of the next phase for OpenAI,\u201d due to the enormous amount of investment needed to pursue its original mission. At some point before Musk left OpenAI\u2019s board of directors in February 2018, OpenAI claims he demanded full control of the company, with the…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What you need to know as Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman begins https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/ai\/what-you-need-to-know-as-elon-musks-lawsuit-against-sam-altman-begins-191500726.html Publish…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":235256,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/ny\/api\/res\/1.2\/jYxfs2RjuWa24WD3YFrgAw--\/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTEyMDA7aD04MDA-\/https:\/\/d29szjachogqwa.cloudfront.net\/images\/2026-03\/60a94c34-12d1-423f-bd78-2e7a2b007c91","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-235255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235255"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":235257,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235255\/revisions\/235257"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}