The face-off in court this week between Elon Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman has the potential to not just neuter OpenAI and its ambitions, but send financial shockwaves throughout the artificial intelligence ecosystem. The case brought by Musk, which opened with jury selection in a courtroom in Oakland, California on Sunday night (AEST), centres on Open AI’s conversion last year from a non-profit entityinto a for-profit company. Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 with Altman, donating about $US38 million ($53 million) to establish a vehicle for pursuing artificial intelligence that could be shared altruistically with the world, putting the public good ahead of any commercial interests. Elon Musk and Sam Altman have been at loggerheads for years. Now their battle is coming to a head in court. Bloomberg, AP The launch of OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT in November 2022 ignited the AI boom, and kicked off a multitrillion-dollar race for AI supremacy. Advertisement When a partnership with Microsoft, which invested $US13.75 billion within a complicated set of arrangements to help develop and commercialise OpenAI’s technology, proved insufficient to fund the group’s near-insatiable need for capital to finance Altman’s ambitions, it opted for the restructuring. Musk, in 2024, initiated the legal action that has now begun in court, arguing that OpenAI had jettisoned its founding humanitarian mission and breached its founding agreement for pure financial gain because of the greed of Altman, as well as OpenAI’s president and co-founder Greg Brockman and Microsoft. While the prediction markets are pricing Musk’s attempt to unravel OpenAI’s structure as a longshot, if successful, it would gut OpenAI. The billionaire wants the restructuring of OpenAI to be unwound and the company returned to a purely non-profit status, along with seeking $US134 billion of damages that would, if his court action is successful, be paid to the new/old OpenAI. He also wants Altman and Brockman removed from their roles. Musk and Altman initially fell out in 2017 when it became obvious that OpenAI needed to raise billions of dollars if it were to continue to build its AI model. Advertisement OpenAI decided to create a for-profit entity, controlled and overseen by the non-profit, which led to its partnership with Microsoft. This gave the software giant equity in the for-profit business, along with a two-sided revenue-sharing arrangement. Related Article