Elon Musk and Sam Altman are about to face off in court. Is an impartial jury even possible?

 

(L-R): OpenAI CEO Sam Altman; Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. 

Joel Saget/Chip Somodevilla/Pool/AFP/Getty Images

A group of regular people who might not even know much about artificial intelligence could soon determine OpenAI’s future.

Elon Musk’s lawsuit against ChatGPT maker OpenAI and its leaders, including CEO Sam Altman, heads to court Monday. Some of the biggest names in tech are expected to testify about whether executives deceived Musk and betrayed OpenAI’s original nonprofit mission when it evolved to include a for-profit arm.
“This is a tech soap opera that all investors will be watching as Musk vs Altman enters the MMA ring,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in an email. “We believe there will be a lot of dirt and slings thrown around in court between Musk and Altman, and that is not a good thing for anyone involved, but Musk has made this personal.”

But in a case involving the richest man in the world, the company that’s become synonymous with AI and major tech players and CEOs, finding impartial jurors will be a challenge.

How will the jury be chosen?

Musk and Altman aren’t just CEOs, they’re celebrities. Many possible jurors, especially from Silicon Valley, “will just have really strong opinions about these two titans of tech and AI,” jury consultant Alan Tuerkheimer told CNN.

But that alone isn’t a problem, said Professor Elizabeth Lippy, director of trial advocacy at Temple University law school.

Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI, speaks at Kakao Media Day in Seoul, South Korea, in February 2025. 

SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg/Getty Images

“The law doesn’t require jurors who have never heard of Elon Musk or AI,” she said. “It requires jurors who can put aside what they’ve heard and decide the case based only on the evidence presented in court.”

The judge is calling a much larger pool of candidates during Monday’s jury selection, about three times larger than typical for a civil case, Tuerkheimer noted.

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Hadas Gold

The trial comes at a precarious time for OpenAI, with a blockbuster IPO on the horizon and frenzied competition among rivals. OpenAI’s IPO ambitions may fall apart if Musk wins the case. Altman and OpenAI co-founder and President Greg Brockman could lose their positions – clearing an easier path for Musk’s AI company, xAI, to get ahead.