Polymarket Bettors Cast Doubt on Musk’s OpenAI Lawsuit Against Sam Altman as Trial Looms

Polymarket bettors are signaling skepticism toward Elon Musk's multibillion-dollar lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman, despite Musk's pledge to donate any legal victory to charity. The Tesla CEO faces mounting doubts over his damages claim—ranging from $79 billion to $134 billion—after the presiding judge questioned the higher figure as the high-stakes trial approaches.

Elon says OpenAI abandoned its original mission and partnered with Microsoft for profit

As you must know, the Sam-Elon beef fight goes back to 2015 when Elon helped co-found OpenAI as a nonprofit focused on safe AGI that would “benefit humanity,” and gave about $38 million in funding, and also brought early ideas and technical input before leaving in 2018.

Elon has been saying that the people running OpenAI broke the deal at the center of that original project, and also believes that OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft showed how far the company had gone from the mission it started with.

OpenAI rejects that version. The company says Elon already knew about, and agreed to, for-profit plans by 2017. It also says talks later fell apart because Elon wanted control. Its side says he left and pushed the company to raise billions on its own. That puts both sides on completely different tracks before the trial even starts. One side says the mission was ditched. The other says the path was known years ago.

There is another part of the wider court fight that already ended. A separate xAI trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI was dismissed in February 2026. That is not the case now, heading to trial, but it sits in the same ugly feud between the two sides.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers questions Elon’s damages math, but lets the jury hear it

The trial is set to begin on April 28 in federal court in California, where Elon’s lawyers are expected to argue that OpenAI and Sam defrauded him and broke their contract.

At a pre-trial hearing on Friday, lawyers for OpenAI tried to block testimony from Elon’s expert witness. They wanted Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to throw out the evidence of the $134 billion damages claim.

The judge was openly skeptical, saying, “A jury is going to understand that [Musk’s expert] is pulling these numbers out of the air.” She also said, “Do I find it convincing? Not really. Based on what I’ve seen, do I find it particularly persuasive? Not really.”

Still, Yvonne refused to dismiss the testimony at that stage.

She said she was not prepared to make that call based on a five-page motion, so the jury will get to hear the evidence. She also made clear how central that evidence is.

The judge said that if she excluded Elon’s expert, “this trial is done, because they have no evidence of damages, right?”

Lawyers for OpenAI attacked that method in court.

Yvonne also pointed to another problem waiting ahead: jury selection in a case full of billionaires and public baggage. She said, “I don’t know if I’ll ask [prospective jurors] a question about billionaires, as they are all billionaires, they are all equally liked or disliked.”

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