Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman will head to trial this month in an Oakland, California, federal courtroom, where nine jurors will settle a years-long dispute between the cofounders of OpenAI over the group’s founding mission. While spats between Silicon Valley’s most influential billionaires are notable in their own rite, former OpenAI employees and nonprofits have taken a special interest in this case because the ruling could influence how the world’s leading AI developer controls and distributes its technology. The stakes are especially high for OpenAI’s corporate future, as a bad outcome in this case could negatively impact its plans to file for an IPO later this year. The ChatGPT-maker is racing against Anthropic and Musk’s SpaceX (which now owns a rival AI lab, xAI) to go public. Musk’s status as an OpenAI competitor—who could benefit significantly if the case goes his way—has raised serious questions about whether he’s the right person to bring it before a jury. A settlement out of court is still possible, though legal experts and people close to the case say it’s unlikely. Here’s everything you need to know about Musk v. Altman. Musk’s suit essentially accuses OpenAI of straying from its founding nonprofit mission: ensuring AGI, a highly capable AI system that can perform a wide range of jobs, benefits humanity. The defendants in the case are OpenAI, Altman, OpenAI’s President and cofounder Greg Brockman, and OpenAI’s biggest investor, Microsoft. Despite generating billions of dollars in revenue, OpenAI is still overseen by a nonprofit today. Musk was one of the original cofounders of the OpenAI nonprofit and donated about $38 million to it during those early days, but he split off in 2018 after getting into disagreements with Altman and Brockman. Now, Musk’s lawsuit has been whittled down to three core claims against OpenAI. The first concerns whether OpenAI breached its charitable trust. Musk alleges that in the early days of OpenAI, he believe