By Gabby Roscuata, May 12, 2026
Musk accused Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman of tricking him, saying he felt like a “fool” for funding the company that eventually reached a value of $800 billion. According to BBC, his claims included breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment.
If Musk wins the case, he will ask Altman and Brockman to step down and pay $150 billion in damages, along with OpenAI reverting to a nonprofit, according to Wall Street Journal.
This could potentially impact CPP’s campus, as a victory for Musk could mean the shutting down of the ChatGPT Edu agreement with the California State University system, which provides a free ChatGPT Edu account to all students.
Computer information systems student Daeton Dennert uses ChatGPT daily to help edit his papers.
“Business-wise, I do think they would start pulling back from that because that’s just excess funding when they’re hurting,” Dennert said.
According to CPP’s website, up to 460,000 students enrolled in the CSU could be potentially affected, with 63,000 staff members as well.
Anthony Orlando, a Cal Poly Pomona associate professor of finance, real estate and law, said this could be troublesome, given OpenAI doesn’t have the money in cash to pay for the damages.
“In theory, they should have $150 billion that they should give back, but the thing about a company at this stage is that they don’t have that money in cash,” Orlando said. “When OpenAI says that it’s worth $850 billion, that means they think that if they ever had to sell everything, that it would be worth $850 billion.”
Regardless, the judge remained skeptical of the number Musk asked for, according to Orlando.
Even though Musk has called for OpenAI to return to being a nonprofit, economics professor, Carsten Lange, explained OpenAI didn’t ever fully shift to a for-profit structure.
“On the one side, if you’re nonprofit, you have more freedom because you don’t have to generate profit,” Lange said. “On the other side, it is way more difficult for nonprofit to acquire capital than for-profit because new investors, they want to see return.”
OpenAI announced it had a for-profit subsidiary under its nonprofit in 2019. The OpenAI Group became a public benefit corporation Oct. 28, 2025, working as a for-profit under the OpenAI Foundation nonprofit holding 26% stake in the OpenAI Group, according to OpenAI.
On the other hand, Altman’s lawyers has argued Musk’s reasoning to take them to court is actually based on competition. He said he was doing this to undermine OpenAI to try and take some of its success and transfer it to his own startup, xAI, which was created in 2023.
Orlando added his concern about Musk’s argument in court, given his own company, which developed X’s AI chatbot Grok, is one of OpenAI’s biggest competitors.
“Why I think a lot of people might not believe him is because if he believed that AI should be developed by a nonprofit organization because it’s best for humanity, why did he create his own for-profit company xAI?”
Additionally, as a cofounder of OpenAI, Musk disowned the company after Microsoft invested billions into the startup. Microsoft has invested at least $13 billion in the company since 2019, which Musk’s legal counsel Steve Molo believes to be “stealing the charity.”
Orlando also mentioned this case is a lesson to students in business; history will repeat itself, similar to when Microsoft and Apple battled for market dominance over computer software.
“This isn’t the last time you’re going to see a trial like this,” Orlando said. “The reality of how great companies and great products are created is very messy and very vicious for better or for worse.”
The lawsuit is scheduled to last three weeks continuing through May, with Brockman scheduled to testify on the fourth day, according to NBC.
