Federal Jury Rejects Elon Musk’s Lawsuit Against OpenAI, Sam Altman in Oakland

A federal jury unanimously ruled against Elon Musk in his lawsuit against OpenAI and its top executives, finding that Musk waited too long to bring the case in Oakland, California.

The jury’s decision was adopted by District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers after jurors deliberated for less than two hours on Monday, and it short-circuited claims that could have reshaped the AI industry’s power structure.

ABC News

Musk had sought up to $134 billion in damages and asked for Sam Altman’s ouster from OpenAI, arguing the company abandoned its founding nonprofit mission in pursuit of profit.

Axios reported that jurors also ruled Musk’s charitable trust claims against OpenAI, Altman, Greg Brockman and Microsoft were barred by the statute of limitations, leaving OpenAI, its executives and Microsoft without liability on Musk’s remaining claims.

In the same case, CNBC said the advisory jury found Musk’s claims fell outside a three-year statute of limitations tied to an agreement to run the AI venture strictly as a charitable nonprofit.

After the verdict, Musk called the decision a "calendar technicality" and vowed to appeal, writing on his social network X that "There is no question to anyone following the case in detail that Altman & Brockman did in fact enrich themselves by stealing a charity."

CNBC reported that Musk’s lawyers said they would appeal to the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, while Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers expressed skepticism and said she was prepared to dismiss the appeal "on the spot."

Al Jazeera

OpenAI’s lead attorney William Savitt framed the ruling as substantive, telling reporters, "It says: You brought your claims too late, and you did it because you were sitting on them to use them as a weapon of a competitor who can't compete in the marketplace."

NPR reported that Marc Toberoff, an attorney representing Musk, said "This one is not over" and continued, "I can sum it up in one word: appeal," after the nine-member advisory jury dismissed the case as beyond the statute of limitations.

NPR also quoted Judge Gonzalez Rogers saying, "I think there's a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury's finding," as she agreed with the jury’s timing determination and tossed the case out.

The verdict preserves the status quo for OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, and it means OpenAI, its executives and Microsoft will not face liability on Musk’s remaining claims after the jury’s statute-of-limitations findings.

NBC News said the jury’s unanimous decision rejected Musk’s claim that Microsoft aided and abetted Altman and Brockman in allegedly breaching their duty to OpenAI, and it also rejected Musk’s request to remove Altman and Greg Brockman from their roles.

Fox Business reported that Musk sought removal of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman and asked for over $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, but the jury found Musk’s claims exceeded the statute of limitations.

NPR described the stakes in terms of what could have happened if the case had proceeded, noting that if jurors had sided with Musk and the judge agreed, OpenAI and Microsoft could have been forced to "disgorge" into OpenAI's nonprofit foundation up to $150 billion in damages.

In the same dispute, BBC reported that Musk accused Altman of breaching a non-profit contract by shifting the ChatGPT-maker to a for-profit company after Musk donated $38m early in OpenAI’s history, but the jury’s timing ruling meant the merits were not reached.