Jury dismisses all claims in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman : NPR

Sam Altman, center, and OpenAI President Greg Brockman, right, arrive at the U.S. District Court in Oakland, Calif., Thursday, April 30, 2026.

Godofredo A. Vasquez/AP

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Godofredo A. Vasquez/AP

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — It took a California jury less than two hours to decide that Elon Musk waited too long to file a lawsuit against his former business partner Sam Altman over the direction he had taken the artificial intelligence company OpenAI since their falling out nearly a decade ago.

In a unanimous decision, the nine-member advisory panel said Musk had exceeded the statute of limitations when he launched his case in 2024. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California agreed, dismissing the case.

“I always said I would accept the jury’s verdict,” Gonzalez Rogers said after rendering his decision. “I believe there is a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury’s conclusion.”

The ruling brings a swift end to a three-week trial that laid bare the fears and ambitions that led two of Silicon Valley’s biggest figures to team up 11 years ago to launch OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and then part ways after a dispute over how to run it.

In determining that the complaint was filed too late, the jury sidestepped the questions at the heart of Musk’s case, accusing Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman of committing a “charitable breach of trust” by allegedly abandoning OpenAI’s founding mission and then profiting from the decision — claims they disputed in court.

OpenAI was established in 2015 as a nonprofit organization aiming to create advanced AI for the benefit of humanity – a mission born out of a shared concern among the founders about the potentially negative consequences of controlling AI by a single person or a for-profit company.

But by 2017, the founders were convinced they needed to create a for-profit arm of OpenAI to raise money and attract researchers in order to compete. Musk wanted control, but others disagreed and he left the board in 2018.

In court, he claimed that Altman “stole from a charity” creating a for-profit entity that became, in his words, “the core” of OpenAI.

OpenAI’s lawyers argued that Musk actually supported creating a for-profit subsidiary in an effort to attract big investments. They argued that, rather than being motivated by a commitment to OpenAI’s original mission, Musk was unhappy that the company had done so well without him. A year and a half before filing the lawsuit, Musk launched xAI, a for-profit AI company, and OpenAI’s lawyers said his lawsuit was an attempt to harm a competitor.

Musk also sued Microsoft for helping OpenAI with investments totaling $13 billion between 2019 and 2023. That claim was also dismissed.

Musk’s lead lawyer had argued that Altman and his colleagues treated the nonprofit as a “shell” after the for-profit subsidiary was created in 2019, moving employees and intellectual property to a for-profit organization.

After OpenAI struck a $10 billion deal with Microsoft in 2023, Musk’s lawyer Steven Molo argued in court last week, the company abandoned its commitment to open source and security, and instead “enriched investors and insiders.”

In addition to helping create OpenAI, Musk was an early source of funds, providing $38 million over several years to help it get off the ground. But Sarah Eddy, a lawyer for the OpenAI defendants, argued in her closing statements last week that this money came with no strings attached, meaning Musk “does not have a charitable trust to uphold.”

Whether or not OpenAI violated a charitable trust, the jury’s decision indicated that they believed Musk took note of actions he said constituted a breach of trust more than three years before filing suit.

If the jury had sided with Musk — and the judge agreed with them — OpenAI and Microsoft could have been forced to “dump” up to $150 billion in damages into OpenAI’s nonprofit foundation. Musk also called for Altman and Brockman to be fired from their positions, as well as to dismantle the for-profit entity.

The verdict interrupted a hearing on possible appeals. But at 10:23 a.m. PT, Edwin Cuenco, the court’s designated deputy, handed a note to Judge Gonzalez Rogers, after which she said, “We have a verdict.” The jury began its deliberations at 8:30 a.m.

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