A federal court has dismissed claims filed by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk against OpenAI and its top executives, in which he accused the company of abandoning its original nonprofit mission aimed at developing artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity.
The lawsuit sought $150 billion in damages and also attempted to reverse OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit structure.
The nine-person jury on Monday ruled that the tech billionaire waited too long to sue OpenAI and its co-founders and missed the deadline for the statute of limitations. The jury had deliberated only two hours.
The jury served in an advisory role, but Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers accepted the verdict Monday as the court’s own and dismissed Musk’s claims.
The three-week trial in Oakland, California, shed light on the bitter falling-out between the two Silicon Valley titans and the beginnings of OpenAI, now a company valued at $852 billion and moving toward potentially one of the largest initial public offerings in history.
Elon Muskย to file an appeal
After losing the lawsuit against OpenAI and its top executives, Musk reacted, saying that the court never ruled on the actual allegations he made against the company and its leadership. In a post shared on X after the verdict, the tech billionaire claimed the case was dismissed only because of a legal timing issue.
“Regarding the OpenAI case, the judge & jury never actually ruled on the merits of the case, just on a calendar technicality. There is no question to anyone following the case in detail that Altman & Brockman did in fact enrich themselves by stealing a charity. The only question is WHEN they did it!” he said in the post.ย
Musk also said he plans to challenge the ruling in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “I will be filing an appeal with the Ninth Circuit, because creating a precedent to loot charities is incredibly destructive to charitable giving in America. OpenAI was founded to benefit all of humanity,” he said.
About the lawsuitย
Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and invested around $38 million during its early years, alleged that Sam Altman and other senior executives shifted the company toward a profit-driven model without his knowledge. OpenAI later went on to develop ChatGPT, one of the world’s most widely used AI platforms.
Altman and OpenAI claimed there was never a promise to keep OpenAI a nonprofit forever. In fact, they argued, Musk knew this and filed his lawsuit because he couldn’t have unilateral control over the fast-growing AI developer.
Musk was seeking damages to be paid to the altruistic efforts of OpenAI’s charitable arm, as well as Altman’s ouster from OpenAI’s board. Musk’s decision to stop funding the company contributed to a bitter rift between the former allies. Musk says he was responding to deceptive conduct that OpenAI’s board picked up on when it fired Altman as CEO in 2023, before he got his job back days later.
The three-week trial saw testimony from Musk, Altman and his top lieutenant Greg Brockman, along with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and a slew of others in the tech titans’ orbit. Musk told jurors on his first of three days on the stand that, fundamentally, “I think they’re going to try to make this lawsuit … very complicated, but it’s actually very simple,” Musk said. “Which is that it’s not OK to steal a charity.”
Musk’s lawsuit claimed that, in addition to “breach of charitable trust,” Altman and Brockman unjustly enriched themselves from the windfall as the ChatGPT maker soared in valuation. Brockman revealed during the trial that his stake in OpenAI is worth about $30 billion.
OpenAI has brushed off Musk’s allegations as an unfounded case of sour grapes aimed at undercutting its rapid growth and bolstering Musk’s own xAI, which he launched in 2023 as a competitor.ย ย
In his testimony, Altman said he had concerns about Musk’s attempts to gain more control over OpenAI, which was aiming to safely build a better-than-human form of AI called artificial general intelligence. “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.
Near the end of his testimony, Altman said that before things turned sour, he had thought very highly of Musk. “I felt like he had abandoned us, not come through on his promises, put the company in a very difficult place, jeopardized the mission, didn’t really care about the things I thought he cared about,” Altman said. “It’s been an extremely painful thing for me … to have someone that I respected so much not acknowledge that and continue to publicly attack us.”
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