Musk v. Altman went to trial Monday in federal court in Oakland, California, with 9 jurors seated to weigh whether Sam Altman and OpenAI improperly steered the company away from its founding nonprofit mission. Several of the selected jurors told the court they hold negative views of Elon Musk personally, and others said they have reservations about AI itself. Only one prospective juror was excused outright over strong anti-Musk sentiment.
Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman were spotted in the courthouse security line in the morning. Musk did not appear. A few dozen journalists watched the proceedings from an overflow room piped in over an audio stream.
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers presided over voir dire and acknowledged the obvious problem of seating an impartial jury when the defendants and the plaintiff are among the most recognizable executives in tech. "The reality is that many people don't like him," Gonzalez Rogers said of Musk from the bench. She added that she believed Americans with negative feelings about Musk could still bring integrity to the judicial process and decide the case fairly.
Key facts
- 01Jury selection in Musk v. Altman wrapped Monday, April 27, 2026, in federal court in Oakland with 9 jurors seated.
- 02Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers told the courtroom: 'The reality is that many people don't like him,' referring to Musk.
- 03Sam Altman and Greg Brockman appeared in the courthouse security line; Musk did not show up.
- 04A few dozen journalists watched from an overflow room via audio stream.
- 05The jury's verdict will be advisory only — Judge Gonzalez Rogers will issue the final ruling.
The 9 jurors ultimately seated include a painter, a former Lockheed Martin employee, and a psychiatrist. Several said they had unfavorable views of artificial intelligence as a category, not just of the people on trial. All told the court those views would not interfere with their ability to determine the facts.
“Only one prospective juror was excused over strong negative opinions about Musk, even after the judge acknowledged from the bench that many Americans simply don't like him.”— Jaeden Schafer
There is a structural wrinkle that lowers the stakes of jury composition more than the surrounding spectacle suggests. The jury's verdict in this case will be advisory. Gonzalez Rogers retains the final call on the legal questions at the center of Musk's complaint, which alleges Altman and other defendants violated the law when OpenAI restructured away from its original nonprofit form.
OpenAI's lead attorney William Savitt told reporters after selection that he was satisfied with the panel. "Mr. Altman, Mr. Brockman, and OpenAI are looking forward to presenting their case to that jury. They're confident in their position and are looking forward to the facts being known," Savitt said. He framed the defense narrowly: "The hurdle we think we need to get over is just to present the truth here. We've got a story about what happened that is consistent with the facts, it's consistent with the documents, and we just want the jury to see that."
Musk spent Monday morning litigating in the other venue available to him. He used X to amplify a recent New Yorker investigation into Altman's business conduct, a story that had been out for weeks. The timing was not accidental. OpenAI's newsroom account responded on X by characterizing Musk's lawsuit as an "attempt to undermine our work to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity."
Outside the courthouse, demonstrators called for a pause on AI development altogether, a reminder that the dispute between Musk and OpenAI is unfolding inside a much larger argument about whether the technology should be advancing at all. That broader debate is unlikely to enter the courtroom directly, but it shapes the public reception of every filing.
The case has been reshaped repeatedly since Musk first sued in 2024, and the underlying facts cut in awkward directions for both sides. Musk co-founded OpenAI as a nonprofit, walked away from the board, and launched the competing lab xAI. OpenAI's defense will lean on documents and contemporaneous communications to argue the restructuring was both lawful and consistent with the mission as it evolved. Musk's team will argue the opposite from many of the same documents.
Opening statements are scheduled for Tuesday, with the first witness expected on the stand the same day. The advisory nature of the jury verdict means the most consequential audience in the room is Gonzalez Rogers, not the 9 jurors, even as both sides spend the coming weeks performing for the panel.
For OpenAI, the trial arrives at an awkward moment. The company is in the middle of multi-year compute commitments tied to its restructured corporate form, including the Google and Amazon deals with Anthropic that have reshaped the cloud-AI map this month. A ruling that called the legality of OpenAI's structure into question would not unwind those deals, but it would hand Musk a narrative win at exactly the time Altman is asking partners, regulators, and employees to treat the new OpenAI as settled. That is the real fight in Oakland, and it will not be decided by which juror likes whom.
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