Billionaires versus billionaires: Inside the bizarre OpenAI trial

The three-week OpenAI trial had numerous markings of its subjects’ wealth, from an inflatable Elon Musk doll to fancy butt cushions.

OAKLAND, Calif. — Six tech billionaires walk into a courthouse …

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It’s not the setup to a joke. It’s the extraordinary spectacle that played out at a federal court complex over three weeks, as a mass concentration of tech wealth was put on display in a lawsuit brought by the wealthiest tech baron of them all, Elon Musk.

The case has now gone to a jury of nine people who are set to begin deliberations Monday morning, but the trial has already illuminated the ways that the federal courts in the United States operate differently for the very wealthy — and the ways in which they operate exactly the same.