Elon Musk has suffered a blow in his landmark trial against OpenAI.
A federal jury in Oakland, California, unanimously ruled against Musk on Monday, finding that OpenAI was not liable to its co-founder — not because his claims lacked merit on the surface, but because he waited too long to bring them. The jury deliberated for less than two hours before delivering the verdict.
The case had been widely watched as a defining moment for the future of artificial intelligence: who controls it, who profits from it, and whether the idealistic promises made at its founding can be held to account.
The Core Dispute
Musk sued OpenAI in 2024, accusing CEO Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman, and the company of manipulating him into donating $38 million to what he believed was a nonprofit safety-first AI lab, then quietly pivoting it into a for-profit enterprise with Microsoft as its dominant financial backer. He called it “stealing a charity.”
Musk and Altman co-founded OpenAI in 2015, with Altman pitching it to Musk as a kind of Manhattan Project for AI — a safety-conscious alternative to Google’s dominance in the field. Musk left the board in 2018. OpenAI set up its for-profit arm the following year, bringing in Microsoft as its anchor investor.
The transformation was not a secret, but Musk’s legal team argued he was actively misled about the direction OpenAI was heading. Internal notes from Greg Brockman, surfaced during discovery, showed leadership privately weighing a for-profit conversion even as they were publicly reassuring Musk of their nonprofit commitment. Brockman’s own notes reportedly acknowledged that converting without Musk’s involvement would be “morally bankrupt.” Despite that, it happened.
The Verdict
The jury’s finding was narrow and procedural: Musk brought his case too late. The statute of limitations had already run out by the time he filed.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers was blunt about what that means for any appeal. “There’s a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury’s finding, which is why I was prepared to dismiss on the spot,” she said. Musk’s lawyer reserved the right to appeal, but the judge’s comments suggest it will be an uphill climb — the limitations question was a matter of fact for the jury, not law.
The trial ran for 11 days and featured sustained attacks on the credibility of both sides. Musk’s lawyer Steven Molo pressed jurors on Altman’s honesty, noting that multiple witnesses had questioned his candor and that Altman himself had not given an unqualified yes when asked during the trial if he was completely trustworthy. OpenAI fired back, arguing Musk was the one motivated by money — and that his long-running public feud with Altman had more to do with competitive jealousy than principle. “Mr. Musk may have the Midas touch in some areas, but not in AI,” OpenAI’s lawyer William Savitt said in closing arguments.
What Was At Stake
The financial figures at play were staggering. Musk’s legal team had been seeking up to $134 billion in damages, calculated on the basis that his early monetary and reputational contributions accounted for 50–75% of OpenAI’s eventual success. Microsoft, which has now spent more than $100 billion on its OpenAI partnership, was also named in the suit.
OpenAI is currently preparing for a possible IPO that could value the company at $1 trillion. Musk’s own xAI — now folded into SpaceX — is reportedly eyeing an IPO that could eclipse that figure.
The Bigger Picture
The tensions that produced this lawsuit go back to the very earliest days of OpenAI. Emails from 2015 show Musk was deeply involved in shaping the company’s identity, right down to its name. By 2017, the founding group was fracturing over the question of structure and control, with Musk threatening to pull funding if the nonprofit model was abandoned. He eventually walked — and OpenAI found its footing without him.
The jury’s verdict does not resolve the underlying questions the trial raised. It does not determine whether OpenAI betrayed its founding mission, whether Altman was fully honest with Musk, or whether a company built on altruistic ideals was quietly turned into a vehicle for private gain. Those questions remain unanswered — and, for now, unadjudicated.
What it does determine is that Elon Musk waited too long to ask them in court.