MUSK BOLTS TO BEIJING WHILE JURY WEIGHS HIS CASE — LAWYERS SCRAMBLE, CLOSING ARGUMENTS DONE, DELIBERATIONS START MONDAY In a courtroom spectacle that defied ordinary protocol, Elon Musk flew to Beijing for meetings with Chinese officials while his own legal team was delivering closing arguments in the landmark trial that could determine the future of OpenAI. His lawyer was forced to apologize to Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers for the absence. The jury got the case and deliberations are set to begin Monday. Over three weeks and a parade of witnesses, the trial laid out a story of betrayal, ambition, and a falling-out between two men who once shared a vision for building artificial general intelligence. Musk’s lawyers accused Sam Altman of lying, called him a thief of a charity, and argued he steered OpenAI from its nonprofit mission toward enriching private investors. Altman’s team fired back that Musk suffered from selective amnesia and spent years trying to seize control of the company for himself. Testimony from Ilya Sutskever, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and other tech heavyweights filled in the backstory of how one of the most consequential companies in the world came to be and who really drove its direction. The jury’s verdict will be advisory, meaning the judge makes the final call. Even so, the outcome will shape how OpenAI proceeds with its controversial conversion into a for-profit company worth hundreds of billions. Musk skipped the finale of his own case to be in China. That alone says something. Keywords: Musk Altman trial, OpenAI jury deliberations, OpenAI nonprofit conversion, Musk China trip trial