One of the most consequential legal battles in the history of technology gets underway on Monday when jury selection begins in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and its chief executive Sam Altman at a federal courthouse in Oakland, California.

The case, before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, is expected to run four weeks. Musk is seeking damages of between $79 billion and $134 billion, making it the largest damages claim in the history of artificial intelligence (AI) litigation.

At the core of the dispute is whether OpenAI’s founders deceived Musk into donating approximately $38 million to the organisation by assuring him it would remain a nonprofit dedicated to developing safe AI for humanity’s benefit. Musk alleges that those assurances were fraudulent and that OpenAI, which he co-founded in 2015 alongside Altman and others, fundamentally changed direction after securing a multi-billion dollar partnership with Microsoft and completing a full conversion to a for-profit company in October 2025.

Beyond Altman, co-defendants in the case include OpenAI President Greg Brockman and Microsoft. Musk is seeking Altman’s removal as chief executive and wants damages redirected to OpenAI’s charitable arm rather than to himself personally.

A critical piece of evidence expected to feature in the trial is a 2017 handwritten diary entry by Brockman, which Judge Gonzalez Rogers has described as significant in her decision to send the case to a jury. The entry is reported to cast doubt on OpenAI’s original nonprofit commitments from an internal perspective.

OpenAI has dismissed the lawsuit as a harassment campaign driven by ego, jealousy, and a desire to slow down a competitor, arguing that Musk’s real motivation is to protect and advance his own AI venture, xAI, which he launched in 2023.

Professor Anné Verhoef, director of the North-West University’s AI Hub in South Africa, says the surface-level dispute between two powerful individuals conceals a much deeper struggle. “The future control of AI is about money and power,” she said, noting that a fully commercialised ChatGPT could expand into social media and e-commerce in ways that directly threaten Musk’s platforms. “This is not simply a disagreement between two individuals. It reflects a much deeper struggle over who governs AI development and who benefits from it.”

She described the current moment as an AI war in which major technology companies are competing aggressively for dominance. “It is about control. Control of technology that will shape economies, societies, and even political systems for years to come,” she said, warning that without regulatory intervention, the public risks becoming a bystander in a power struggle with far-reaching implications.

Musk and Altman co-founded OpenAI as a nonprofit AI research laboratory in 2015. Musk departed from the organisation in 2018 following a failed attempt to merge it with Tesla. OpenAI is best known as the company behind ChatGPT, the AI assistant that triggered a global race in generative AI development.