Technology and Science · 19 May, 2026 · 2 min read
Federal Jury in Oakland Dismisses Elon Musk’s OpenAI Lawsuit Against Sam Altman
Oakland federal jury unanimously ruled Musk's claims time-barred by statute of limitations. Sam Altman and OpenAI found not liable; claims dismissed.
Whether the verdict addressed the “merits” of Musk’s claims.
7 of 9 outlets skipped it: musk sought to remove Altman and Brockman from leadership..
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NBC News
“Molo told reporters that he interpreted the verdict as a narrow decision on ‘technical legal issues’”Read the original ↗
Business Today
“judge & jury never actually ruled on the merits of the case, just on a ‘calendar technicality.’”Read the original ↗
Framing changes whether audiences see dismissal as procedure-only.
Jury Dismisses Musk
A federal jury in Oakland, California, dismissed Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI after taking under two hours to reach a unanimous verdict that the case was filed too late. The trial centered on Musk’s claim that OpenAI abandoned its nonprofit founding mission by moving toward a for-profit structure, and Musk asked the court to reverse OpenAI’s for-profit conversion and return roughly $150 billion to the nonprofit. OpenAI’s lead lawyer William Savitt told the jury, “It’s too late now to gin up something to harm a competitor,” during his opening arguments.
Musk had portrayed the dispute as “the good fightto prevent Altman from “stealing” OpenAI,” but the jury’s timing ruling left the core allegations unexamined. The verdict adopted by District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers came after a three-week trial in Oakland and left OpenAI, Altman, and Greg Brockman not liable on the claims the jury found time-barred.
Appeal and Competing Narratives
After the verdict, Musk said the judge & jury never actually ruled on the merits of the case, writing on X that it was “just on a calendar technicality.” Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said, “I think there's a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury's finding,” when she accepted the jury’s decision and dismissed the lawsuit. OpenAI’s lawyer William Savitt argued that the jury’s finding confirmed the case was “a hypocritical attempt to sabotage a competitor,” and he said the jury reached the right result quickly.
Musk’s legal team, including Steven Molo, said they intended to appeal, with Molo telling reporters, “We want to get going on the appeal, with all due respect to the court,” after the verdict. The jury’s statute-of-limitations ruling also rejected Musk’s claim that Microsoft aided and abetted Altman and Brockman, and Microsoft welcomed the decision, saying “The facts and the timeline in this case have long been clear.”
What’s at Stake Next
The dismissal preserves the status quo for OpenAI, which the NBC News report described as “the company behind ChatGPT” and one of the most valuable privately held tech startups. NTime Magazine reported that xAI’s position has been weakened by the lawsuit’s fallout, including that SpaceX acquired xAI in February and that downloads of Grok have fallen by 60% since January. The same Time report said xAI CEO Musk’s sworn testimony on April 30 dealt another blow to xAI’s credibility, with the testimony describing that xAI “partly” trains its models on the outputs of OpenAI’s models.
“The facts and the timeline in this case have long been clear, and we welcome the jury’s decision to dismiss these claims as untimely.”
Beyond the courtroom, Time reported that on May 6 xAI announced that Anthropic would take over all compute capacity at Colossus 1, and it framed renting out compute as a sign of “insufficient demand” to use xAI’s models. With OpenAI valued at $852 billion after raising $122 billion in March, the next phase for both sides hinges on whether Musk’s appeal can change anything, while OpenAI and Microsoft move forward with their work and scale AI for “people and organizations around the world.”