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- The attraction of tycoons: the high-profile trial on AI ethics turned out to be a redistribution of the chatbot market
The attraction of tycoons: the high-profile trial on AI ethics turned out to be a redistribution of the chatbot market
A high-profile trial on the ethics of using neural networks has started in the USA. Jury selection has begun in the Oakland District Court in Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI and its executives Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. The owner of SpaceX and Starlink accuses his business partner of cheating. He allegedly promised that the developer of ChatGPT, OpenAI, would remain a non—profit organization working for the benefit of humanity. Elon Musk claims that he donated about $ 40 million for this purpose, but later the project turned into a multibillion-dollar business. Now the investor demands that the company be returned to its original status and that the proceeds be used for socially useful purposes. Experts believe that the process goes beyond a private dispute and reflects a broader redistribution of influence in the global artificial intelligence market, where Musk also has his own strategic interests.
The Clash of Billionaires
A lawsuit filed by Elon Musk has begun in the Oakland, California, District Court, which may be the culmination of his long-term conflict with the leadership of OpenAI.
— As part of this lawsuit, the businessman claims that OpenAI, Altman and company president Greg Brockman violated their promise to keep the laboratory non-profit forever. Of the 26 initial charges, only two reached court. Unjustified enrichment and violation of the terms of a charitable trust. Both have serious weight in California courts. The court will decide whether the people who created OpenAI with charitable donations can legally convert this labor into a business worth $852 billion and keep a stake in it," Yegor Zubakin, a political scientist and expert at the New Era Center for the Development of Humanitarian Technologies, told Izvestia.
On April 25, it became known that Elon Musk excluded fraud items from the list of claims. Only the accusations of "unjustified enrichment" and "violation of the charitable mission" remain relevant.
However, there is another aspect to this story. When OpenAI published its usage policy in 2023, the company's technologies could not be used "for military, weapons or combat purposes." But in 2026, the company entered into an agreement with the Pentagon that allows its models to be used in classified military operations, the expert explained.
This decision is directly related to the preparation of OpenAI for the IPO, he noted. According to him, in order to receive a high rating when entering the stock exchange, it is important for the company to demonstrate not only technological leadership, but also the ability to ensure stable multibillion—dollar revenues from the largest customer, the US government. The expert added that after entering the public market as a full-fledged commercial structure, OpenAI will be able to interact with the Pentagon with virtually no institutional restrictions inherited from the non-profit past.
— It would be naive to consider Musk's lawsuit in isolation from this context. American business culture traditionally perceives litigation as a legitimate tool of competition. But in Musk's case, the scale of his political investments, including the purchase of Twitter, did not translate into expected dividends. Its key businesses (SpaceX, Starlink) are tightly tied to government and military contracts, and Tesla is under increasing pressure from competitors, the expert said.
For years, Musk has been expressing concern about the risks of uncontrolled AI for the future of humanity. But these arguments began to look less altruistic after he launched OpenAI's direct competitor, xAI, in 2023. This structure also has a contract with the Ministry of Defense and has agreed to use its tools in "any legitimate scenarios."
— A personal dispute between two former partners turned into a natural battle over who should own the AI. Humanity, as promised by the founding manifesto of OpenAI 2015, the shareholders of the planned trillion—dollar IPO, or the Pentagon," said Yegor Zubakin.
The lawsuit between the businessman and the creators of ChatGPT began in 2024. The plaintiff demands to dismiss the current management, return OpenAI to non-profit status and donate $134 billion of unjustified profits to charity, according to Musk.
The businessman was at the origin of OpenAI, which was established in 2015, but left the board of directors in 2018. After that, the company attracted multibillion-dollar investments, including from Microsoft. In February 2026, OpenAI rejected Musk's purchase offer for almost $100 billion. The company is currently preparing for an initial public offering (IPO), which could value the business at about $1 trillion.
The AI Market Bubble
The conflict between Elon Musk and Sam Altman is primarily about competition in the market of artificial intelligence and chatbots, American scientist Malek Dudakov explained to Izvestia.
— Now Musk is trying to take advantage of the serious problems that OpenAI is facing as the main startup in the artificial intelligence market in the United States. We see that the company is incurring significant losses: for example, in the third quarter of 2025, they amounted to about $12 billion. We are talking about multibillion—dollar losses on a regular basis," the expert said.
He stressed that OpenAI is currently not profitable and exists at the expense of investments, promising investors a "bright future" and high profitability in the future, which makes the business model look like a financial bubble. At the same time, the company has a number of market problems: the share of its flagship chatbot has decreased to about 60%, whereas previously it could reach about 90%.
In the USA, ChatGPT has two main competitors — Google with the Gemini model and xAI with the Grok product. According to the expert, Elon Musk seeks to use Sam Altman's problems to bring down ChatGPT's market share and strengthen Grok's market position.
— Musk points out that Altman initially imagined himself to be such a penniless academic who develops artificial intelligence as an idea, as a concept, and then moved away from it and started trying to make money. He emphasizes that Altman initially deceived investors and those who believed in his project. Musk does not seem to be deceiving and immediately says that he is making money, and not just developing AI for the benefit of the whole world and is not trying to pretend to be an altruist,— explained Malek Dudakov.
The unprofitability of a number of AI companies, as noted, reinforces the negative information background around the industry. In some US states, restrictions on the construction of new data centers are indeed being discussed due to the increasing load on the power grid and the possible increase in electricity prices. According to the expert, it is not surprising that a significant part of Americans negatively perceive artificial intelligence as a technology capable of making money.
— I think that these problems of OpenAI, which will manifest themselves, including in court, can quite easily provoke the collapse of the entire artificial intelligence bubble. This, in turn, can lead to a serious financial crisis in both the United States and the global economy," the expert believes.
According to Eldar Murtazin, a leading analyst at Mobile Research Group, this process is part of the struggle for the emerging artificial intelligence market. Soon, AI will be able to independently create neural networks for specific tasks, which will give monopolists huge advantages. Elon Musk is just one of the players in this field, and not the most influential, the expert noted.
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