Elon Musk watches as President Donald Trump speaks at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, Nov. 19, 2025.
Brendan Smialowski AFP | Getty Images
Elon Musk is seeking to remove OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman from the company’s board as part of a lawsuit scheduled to go to trial later this month.
In a legal filing Tuesday, Musk’s lawyers laid out specific remedies their client is seeking if a judge and jury decide that Altman and OpenAI defrauded Musk, the world’s richest man.
Musk sued Altman and OpenAI in 2024, claiming he was “persistently manipulated” into contributing $38 million to the company on the promise that the artificial intelligence company he helped found nearly a decade ago would remain a nonprofit organization. Since then, the two sides have been embroiled in a public war of words, in addition to legal battles and budding business rivalries.
“Plaintiffs will seek an order removing Mr. Altman as a director of the OpenAI nonprofit board and removing both Mr. Altman and Mr. Brockman as directors of the for-profit OpenAI,” Musk’s lawyers said in a Tuesday filing. “Removing a charity’s officers or directors is a common remedy when they are unable to protect or carry out the charity’s public mission.”
Musk is also asking the court to return OpenAI to operating as an actual nonprofit organization, according to the filing. The company completed its reorganization in October and now operates as a nonprofit organization with a 26% stake in its for-profit division, which includes ChatGPT.
Jury selection in the case is scheduled to begin April 27 in federal court in Oakland, California. OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.
Musk, Altman and others co-founded OpenAI as a nonprofit AI research institute in 2015. Musk left OpenAI in 2018 after trying to convince executives to merge the company with his electric car company Tesla.
In 2023, Musk launched a competing company called xAI, which developed an AI image generator and chatbot Grok. In February, Musk’s SpaceX acquired xAI, which also owns X (formerly Twitter), in a deal that valued the combined company at $1.25 trillion. SpaceX recently filed confidential documents with the SEC in preparation for what is likely to be a record-setting IPO.
OpenAI sent a letter to the attorneys general of California and Delaware on Monday asking them to investigate “inappropriate and anticompetitive conduct” by Musk and his associates ahead of the trial. OpenAI strategy director Jason Kwon claimed in the letter that Musk is plotting to undermine OpenAI through various “attacks” against the company, including “coordinating efforts” with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Musk’s lawyers previously said in a January filing that their client should receive up to $134 billion in damages from OpenAI and its largest investor. microsoftcalled what the companies received as a result of their early work with OpenAI and financial support “unjust enrichment.”
In Tuesday’s filing, Musk’s lawyers said their client is seeking “restitution of all ill-gotten gains, including Microsoft’s profits, to OpenAI Charities.”
—CNBC’s Ashley Capoot contributed to this report.
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