The federal trial between Elon Musk and Sam Altman opened in Oakland on April 27, 2026, turning a long-running fight over OpenAI’s founding mission into a live test of the company’s for-profit conversion and governance. The case could affect how OpenAI is structured, who controls its direction, and how the company’s rapid commercialization is judged under its original nonprofit framework.
OpenAI says its U.S. ChatGPT ads pilot has reached a $100 million annualized revenue run rate in just six weeks, underscoring how quickly the company’s newest monetization test is scaling. Reuters reported that the company plans self-serve ad tools and expansion into more countries in the coming weeks.
OpenAI is testing ads in ChatGPT for some U.S. users on the Free and Go plans, a move that underscores how the company is trying to balance broad access with a new revenue stream.
OpenAI is sharpening its enterprise strategy, saying business revenue now makes up more than 40% of the company’s total as it expands Codex, Frontier, and its agent-first software vision.
Sam Altman is using his platform to argue that the benefits of advanced AI should be matched by new policy ideas on taxation, regulation, and redistribution. The move underscores how OpenAI’s chief executive is shaping the public debate well beyond product launches.
