Musk v. Altman Jury Deliberates Monday: What Every Possible Verdict Means for OpenAI's $1 Trillion Future

# Musk v. Altman Jury Deliberates Monday: What Every Possible Verdict Means for OpenAI's $1 Trillion Future

> **Quick answer:** Nine jurors begin deliberating Monday, May 19, in Oakland on whether Sam Altman and Greg Brockman violated charitable-trust law when they restructured OpenAI into a for-profit company. Elon Musk is seeking $134 billion in damages and the removal of both executives. The verdict is advisory — Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers makes the final call — but every outcome carries seismic consequences for OpenAI, Microsoft, and the future of AI governance.

Monday morning, nine jurors walk into the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building in Oakland carrying the weight of a question nobody has ever had to answer before: can you steal a charity by turning it into a trillion-dollar company? The Musk Altman trial jury deliberation beginning May 19, 2026 is the culmination of a three-week courtroom battle that has exposed the internal contradictions at the heart of how OpenAI was built — and what it has become.

This is everything you need to know before the verdict lands.

## What Happened in Three Weeks of Trial

The case, formally styled as Musk v. Altman et al., centers on a single legal theory: that when OpenAI converted from a California nonprofit into a public benefit corporation in October 2025, it breached the charitable trust that Elon Musk's roughly $38 million in donations (made between 2015 and 2017) were meant to support.