Agentic AI
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Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
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Litigation
Musk’s Claims Against Altman and Microsoft Dismissed After Less Than Two Hours
A jury spent three weeks in an Oakland federal courtroom listening to billionaire Elon Musk face off against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over the fate of the company. As it turned out Monday, the jury didn’t need to decide which executive was more trustworthy.
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In less than two hours, the jury found that Musk’s lawsuit against Altman and OpenAI wasn’t filed within the three-year statute of limitations.
Musk claimed that in creating a for-profit arm of OpenAI and taking $13 billion from Microsoft, Altman and his co-defendants were “stealing a charity” and sought to enrich themselves. He wanted to see the company restored as a nonprofit and for up to $150 billion in damages to be paid to that entity. He also wanted Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman removed.
In a unanimous decision the nine-person panel found that Musk’s claims were time barred, and did not provide decisions on the merits of the claims raised daily in high-drama testimony in federal civil court.
The jury determined that Musk did not file his claim for breach of charitable trust against OpenAI within three years of the alleged breach. Musk’s claim for aiding and abetting breach of charitable trust against Microsoft was also filed outside the statute of limitations, the jury found. Musk filed the suit in August 2024, and had to prove he had no way of knowing OpenAI had breached that trust before August 5, 2021.
Musk responded to the verdict on X. “Regarding the OpenAI case, the judge & jury never actually ruled on the merits of the case, just on a calendar technicality. There is no question to anyone following the case in detail that Altman & Brockman did in fact enrich themselves by stealing a charity,” he wrote.
“The only question is WHEN they did it! I will be filing an appeal with the Ninth Circuit, because creating a precedent to loot charities is incredibly destructive to charitable giving in America. OpenAI was founded to benefit all of humanity,” Musk wrote.
Microsoft in a statement after the verdict said, “The facts and the timeline in this case have long been clear and we welcome the jury’s decision to dismiss these claims as untimely. We remain committed to our work with OpenAI to scale AI for people and organizations around the world.”
The end of the lawsuit comes months before OpenAI is expected to go public with a valuation nearing $1 trillion. A victory for Musk could have upended that plan and thrown the AI lab into chaos.
“There’s a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury’s finding,” Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said.
After the jury rendered their decision, she thanked them for their service.
“A jury reflects the attitudes and mores of the community from which it is drawn,” she said.
“The group of jurors who are drawn to hear a case make a decision and then melt away. It is not present the next day to be criticized. It is the one governmental agency that has no ambition. It is as human as the people who make it up.”
Musk’s legal team told the judge Musk plans to appeal. The decision comes as Elon Musk’s SpaceX is seeking its own IPO, which could come in June. The company is expected to be valued at more than $1.2 trillion.