Jury rules Musk waited too long; OpenAI lawsuit dismissed

A nine-person federal jury ruled Monday that Elon Musk missed the statute of limitations to sue OpenAI, delivering a full courtroom victory to CEO Sam Altman and the artificial intelligence company Musk helped found more than a decade ago.

The verdict — reached after just two hours of deliberation and accepted by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers — closes the highest-profile lawsuit in the AI industry and leaves OpenAI, now valued at $852 billion, free to continue its shift from nonprofit to for-profit company.

The nine jurors deliberated for just two hours before concluding that Musk had missed the statutory deadline to bring claims of breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment, ABC7 Los Angeles reported. Judge Gonzalez Rogers, presiding in Oakland federal court, accepted the jury's advisory verdict as the court's binding ruling.

Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and invested $38 million in its early years. He accused Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman of quietly converting the nonprofit into a for-profit enterprise, and sought both financial damages and Altman's removal from the board.

"I think they're going to try to make this lawsuit ... very complicated, but it's actually very simple, which is that it's not OK to steal a charity," Musk told jurors on his first of three days on the stand, according to ABC7 Los Angeles.

OpenAI's attorneys argued the company never promised to remain nonprofit and that Musk's real motive was frustration over losing control of a company that grew far beyond his influence. Altman, who was briefly ousted and reinstated as CEO in November 2023, addressed that tension in his own testimony.

"Part of the reason we started OpenAI is we didn't think AGI could be under the control of any one person, no matter how good their intents are," Altman said. He described watching Musk's public attacks as "an extremely painful thing for me ... to have someone that I respected so much not acknowledge that and continue to publicly attack us."

The three-week trial drew testimony from major technology figures including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and former OpenAI board members Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley. OpenAI is currently valued at $852 billion; Brockman's stake in the company is estimated at roughly $30 billion. Musk departed OpenAI in 2023 and subsequently launched rival AI firm xAI.

The dismissal marks a decisive legal and reputational win for Altman as OpenAI faces ongoing scrutiny over its evolution from a mission-driven nonprofit into one of the world's most valuable technology companies.