The two big tech leaders, Elon Musk and Sam Altman, were at the centre of a high-stakes legal battle after a U.S. jury rejected Musk’s $150 billion lawsuit against OpenAI, ruling that the case was filed too late and finding no liability on the company over alleged mission drift.
The trial was widely regarded as a pivotal moment for the future of OpenAI and artificial intelligence more broadly, shaping both how the technology should be used and who ought to gain from it. In a unanimous decision, the jury in federal court in Oakland, California, ruled that Musk filed his lawsuit too late. Their deliberations lasted under two hours.
Elon Musk has responded after losing his high-profile lawsuit against ChatGPT developer OpenAI, asserting that the court never addressed the substance of his claims against the company and its leaders.
"There's a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury's finding, which is why I was prepared to dismiss on the spot," U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) following the ruling, the tech billionaire argued that the case was thrown out solely due to a procedural timing issue, rather than because a jury rejected his allegations against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman. Musk said the judge and jury did not rule on the merits of the OpenAI case, but only on a “calendar technicality.”
A jury in Oakland, California, ruled that Elon Musk waited too long to file his lawsuit against OpenAI, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and Microsoft, which sought $150 billion in damages and aimed to unwind OpenAI’s for-profit structure. The court found that Musk was aware of the company’s shift years earlier, making the 2024 filing exceed California’s three-year limit. The jury did not assess OpenAI’s alleged mission breach and reached its decision in about two hours. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers accepted the verdict and dismissed the case.