A California jury has rejected all of Elon Musk’s claims against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft, and other defendants after a three-week trial in Oakland. The jury reached its unanimous verdict in under two hours.
The case centered on Musk’s claim that Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman had “stolen a charity” by transforming OpenAI from a nonprofit into a commercially driven organization. Musk, who helped found OpenAI in 2015 and donated roughly $38 million to the lab, argued that the company had abandoned its founding mission to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity.
The jury did not rule on the substance of those claims. Instead, it found that Musk had waited too long to file his lawsuit, placing his claims outside the statute of limitations. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said there was “a substantial amount of evidence” to support that finding and indicated she had been prepared to dismiss the case without a jury.
OpenAI’s lawyers argued that Musk’s donations carried no legal restrictions and that the company’s shift toward a for-profit structure was necessary to compete against rivals such as Google DeepMind. They also presented evidence that Musk had at one point proposed a for-profit model himself, contingent on his own control of the company.
The claim against Microsoft, which Musk accused of aiding OpenAI’s alleged breach of charitable trust, was also dismissed. Musk’s lead counsel stated that an appeal is planned.
Sources: CNBC, TechCrunch
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