A California jury has tossed out Elon Musk’s high-profile lawsuit against OpenAI and its boss Sam Altman.
In a unanimous verdict, the jury agreed that Musk had waited too long to file his lawsuit, leaving all of his claims essentially expired.
Musk had accused Altman of breaching a non-profit contract by shifting the ChatGPT-maker to a for-profit company after Musk donated $38m (£28.5m) early in OpenAI’s history.
Musk claimed Altman had deceived him by accepting his money and then reneging on OpenAI’s original non-profit mission to develop artificial intelligence (AI) technology for the benefit of humanity.
Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, the presiding judge, dismissed Musk’s lawsuit after a nine-member jury in U.S. District Court in Oakland, California, concluded that the suit was not filed within the legally required time frame.
In 2024, the tech billionaire had accused OpenAI and its chiefs, Altman and Greg Brockman of “breach of charitable trust.” Musk also accused OpenAI investor, Microsoft, of “aiding and abetting” its breach of charitable trust.
Musk’s legal team said the tech billionaire would appeal the court’s verdict.
In a post on X, Musk doubled down on his allegations against Messrs Altman and Brockman, vowing he “will be filing an appeal with the Ninth Circuit, because creating a precedent to loot charities is incredibly destructive to charitable giving in America”.
“Regarding the OpenAI case, the judge & jury never actually ruled on the merits of the case, just on a calendar technicality,” Musk said. “There is no question to anyone following the case in detail that Altman & Brockman did in fact enrich themselves by stealing a charity. The only question is WHEN they did it!”
