A California federal court has thrown out Elon Musk’s massive $150 billion legal challenge against artificial intelligence company OpenAI, with jurors determining the billionaire entrepreneur filed his case too late.
The nine-person jury in Oakland reached their unanimous decision in under two hours following a three-week trial. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers immediately accepted the jury’s recommendation and dismissed the lawsuit due to statute of limitations issues.
Musk’s legal challenge centered on allegations that CEO Sam Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman violated their fiduciary responsibilities by shifting away from the company’s founding nonprofit goals toward a commercial, profit-focused business model backed by Microsoft.
The lawsuit claimed Altman broke a nonprofit agreement after Musk contributed $38 million to OpenAI. Musk contended that Altman took his financial support while secretly planning to convert the organization into a money-making enterprise aimed at personal enrichment instead of creating artificial intelligence to help humanity.
OpenAI’s attorneys successfully demonstrated that Musk had been aware of the company’s intentions to transition to a for-profit model for years before he finally brought the lawsuit in 2024.
The court decision clears away a major legal hurdle for OpenAI as the company moves toward a highly anticipated stock market debut that could potentially place the firm’s worth at approximately $1 trillion.
After the ruling, Musk took to social media platform X to denounce the court’s decision, calling the dismissal a “calendar technicality.” His lawyer, Marc Toberoff, announced plans to challenge the ruling in the Ninth Circuit appeals court.
Musk continued his criticism of Altman and Brockman in another X post, writing: “Altman & Brockman did in fact enrich themselves by stealing a charity. The only question is WHEN they did it! Creating a precedent to loot charities is incredibly destructive to charitable giving in America.”
