A jury has ruled against Elon Musk in his lawsuit against OpenAI, with Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers affirming the decision and stating she could dismiss Musk's claims immediately.
The dispute stems from Musk's early involvement with OpenAI, where he co-founded the organization and invested $38 million in 2015, before departing in 2018. In 2024, he initiated legal action against OpenAI, asserting that CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman had "stolen a charity" for personal gain, deviating from the organization's original mission of developing artificial intelligence for the greater good. Musk sought the return of what he termed "wrongfully obtained profits," which he claimed had ballooned to $134 billion. The lawsuit also named Microsoft, OpenAI's largest and earliest investor, as a defendant.
Furthermore, Musk aimed to impede OpenAI's recent restructuring that divided the company into a for-profit and a nonprofit sector, clarifying that his claim to the $134 billion was intended for the nonprofit arm, not for personal gain.
In response, Altman has maintained that there were no guarantees regarding the company's future direction and accused Musk of attempting to hinder OpenAI's progress. He noted that Musk had shown little concern for the reorganization prior to his departure and had even advocated for transitioning OpenAI to a "commercial" model.
Importantly, the jury's decision was based on the expiration of the statute of limitations rather than the validity of Musk's claims. OpenAI's commercial division was established in 2019, and Musk had a three-year window to file his lawsuit but only remembered the alleged infringement in 2024, coinciding with increasing rivalry between OpenAI and his own startup, xAI.
Opinions on the fairness of the court's ruling are divided, with some believing Musk was merely staging a performance, while others feel that OpenAI has strayed from its foundational principles.
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