Closing arguments in Elon Musk's civil suit against Sam Altman, OpenAI, Greg Brockman and Microsoft begin Thursday morning in Oakland federal court. [1] The trial that the paper has tracked through Altman's testimony ends not with a jury verdict that resolves anything, but with two incompatible founding narratives entering a record that has already been built for an appellate court that does not yet exist.

The mechanics matter. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers divided the case into a liability phase and a remedies phase. [2] The nine-person jury — seated April 27 — votes on liability only, and its verdict is advisory. [2] Gonzalez Rogers, sitting in equity, issues the binding decision on both phases, on her own timeline, which several CNBC reports describe as arriving "possibly next week." [3] A reader who follows only headline coverage misses the structural fact: a jury verdict, when it comes, is closer to an amicus brief than a judgment.

The number that anchors the closings is $150 billion. Per Reuters and Courthouse News covering the trial filings, Musk is seeking that sum from OpenAI and Microsoft, with any award going to OpenAI's charitable arm rather than to Musk personally. [4] Some UK outlets have used $134 billion — the figure Musk's lawyers cited in January filings. [5] The trial briefs filed in Oakland use $150 billion; the paper uses that number, and notes the discrepancy is a function of which document you read.

Two civil claims remain at trial: breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment. Of the 26 claims Musk originally asserted in 2024, only these two survived, after his own lawyers dismissed the fraud and constructive fraud counts to streamline the case. [6] Microsoft is named separately on an aiding-and-abetting theory. The remedies Musk has requested go beyond money: removal of Altman and Brockman from their roles, and unwinding of OpenAI's for-profit conversion into a public benefit corporation. [4]

The testimony was the work of the trial; the closings are its compression. Altman, on the stand Tuesday, said the nonprofit had been "left for dead" and that he could not have raised $200 billion through philanthropy alone. [1] Musk, on the stand two weeks earlier, was confronted with his own X posts — including a recent claim that "Tesla will be one of the companies to make AGI" — and conceded under oath that Tesla "is not pursuing AGI right now." [7] Brockman testified that OpenAI considered merging with Cerebras and that Musk was open to a deal. The Cerebras detail acquired its own dateline this week: CBRS opens for trading the same morning the closings begin.

Two other moments will sit in front of the jury. Musk's lawyer Steven Molo opened on April 28 with "without Elon Musk, there would be no OpenAI, pure and simple." [6] Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified about the $10 billion 2023 investment that Musk, in messages shown to the jury, told Altman felt like "a bait and switch." Altman replied: "I agree this feels bad." Those two text messages, more than any individual witness, are what jurors will weigh against the structural question of whether a 501(c)(3)'s pivot to a public benefit corporation breached a charitable trust under California equity law.

The framing on X has compressed differently from the framing in mainstream coverage. MSM treats Thursday as the trial's endpoint. X investor accounts treat it as a discount mechanism — every clean-OpenAI-win headline tightens the price on $1 trillion-IPO secondary lines, every split verdict widens it. The OpenAI prospectus drafting team has watched the trial for what would have to be disclosed about Altman's testimony, Brockman's account of the 2017 negotiation, and the text-message record that is now part of the public file. [8]

What today does not produce is finality. Gonzalez Rogers will instruct the jury on the elements of the two claims, will hear closings, and will then receive the advisory verdict. Her ruling — which determines whether the for-profit conversion stands, whether Altman and Brockman remain officers, and whether anything close to $150 billion is owed — will arrive on her schedule. The remedies phase, if it proceeds, will be a separate proceeding. The clean read on Thursday is that the loudest part of the case ends and the consequential part is still being written.

The cleanest test of how the verdict matters comes Friday morning. If CBRS — Cerebras — opens above its $185 IPO price, the public-market vote on AI infrastructure demand is independent of whatever the jury finds. If OpenAI's secondary-market discount widens, the trial transcript will already have moved the price before the judge rules. Either way, the trial is not over when the lawyers stop talking.

-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco