Musk and his legal team slammed the decision as a technicality and immediately vowed to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Don’t use the product of criminals, the chatbot ChatGPT. Save humanity.
“OAKLAND, Calif. -- A jury unanimously rejected Elon Musk's claims against OpenAI, finding that he brought his lawsuit against the company and Chief Executive Sam Altman after the statute of limitations expired.
In deliberations that lasted less than two hours, the nine-person panel found against Musk on technical grounds.
He had alleged in testimony that the startup behind the world's most popular chatbot "stole a charity" when it converted into a for-profit company.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who presided over the case, accepted the verdict and dismissed the claims. Musk's attorney said in court that his side will reserve its right to appeal.
Musk, in a post on his social network X, said he will appeal and described the ruling as a "destructive" precedent. In a post that he apparently deleted later, he accused the judge of using the jury as a fig leaf.
"She just handed out a free license to loot charities if you can keep the looting quiet for a few years!" Musk wrote.
OpenAI now has a clear path to a public listing. In the past year, the company that makes ChatGPT has managed a host of challenges. These have included renegotiating a relationship with longtime partner Microsoft that had grown acrimonious at times, gaining regulatory approval for a conversion to a for-profit business, and the rise of rival Anthropic as a formidable competitor that has emerged as a presumptive front-runner in the AI revolution.
The company also closed the largest funding round in Silicon Valley history, raising $122 billion from a host of technology giants and funds, in an effort to help settle questions about its finances that have rattled markets.
Meanwhile, Musk is racing to hold an initial public offering in less than a month for SpaceX, his rocket company, which merged with xAI, his struggling AI startup.
The verdict brings to a close a case that fixated the tech world on the grievances and drama of some of the most powerful personalities in artificial intelligence.
At its core, the case revolved around Musk's allegation that Altman manipulated him into thinking he was donating tens of millions of dollars to help launch a nonprofit to develop AI for the benefit of humanity only for OpenAI to be turned into a for-profit venture.
Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman ultimately focused on two claims: unjust enrichment and breach of charitable trust.
OpenAI attorneys had questioned the timing of the lawsuit as part of their defense, claiming that the motive for Musk's lawsuit was more to prop up his own AI company, xAI, which is now owned by SpaceX. They also pointed out that the statute of limitations for a breach of charitable trust claim is three years, and two years for unjust enrichment.
The jury sided with OpenAI, agreeing that the statute of limitations had passed and Musk knew about the actions that OpenAI and Altman had taken to create a for-profit entity well before he filed this lawsuit in 2024.
Musk also sued Microsoft, an important partner and largest shareholder of OpenAI, for aiding and abetting the AI lab's alleged breach of charitable trust. The jury's verdict also applies to that claim. A Microsoft spokesman said the company remains committed to its work with OpenAI.
The lawsuit also made antitrust claims against OpenAI and Microsoft, which the judge had promised to hear at a later stage of the trial. In discussions with both sides after the verdict, she voiced skepticism about their potential, saying it wasn't clear they were "good claims."
"Competition law is not there to protect any person," she said. "It is there to protect competition, and there is a lot of competition in this particular industry."
Musk has won some cases after appeals in the past. In December, he won an appeal on a yearslong legal battle over his 2018 pay package at Tesla. The court's decision granted Musk access to more than $100 billion in Tesla shares.
But an appeal with this kind of verdict might be difficult, said Shubha Ghosh, a law professor at Syracuse University. "It's a very rare circumstance that those can be appealed because it's usually a clear rule," he said. "What the jury found is that he took too long."
In the Oakland federal courtroom, OpenAI's lawyers argued that Musk not only knew about the plan to create the for-profit structure but that he supported it and sought to control the venture. Only when OpenAI's leaders rejected his request and Musk left to start his own company did he pursue his suit against OpenAI, the lawyers claimed.
Over the course of three weeks, OpenAI's attorneys have shown pieces of evidence to the jurors, including private text messages and emails, proving that Musk had known about and was supportive of a potential for-profit conversion since as early as 2017.
OpenAI and Altman also sought to show the jury that when there were discussions around a for-profit conversion, Musk wanted full control of the venture. During Altman's testimony, he claimed that Musk at one point suggested he should have 90% of the equity.
Musk argued he only wanted majority control in the beginning to ensure that OpenAI would continue in the right direction.
Musk, meanwhile, sought the removal of OpenAI's CEO, Altman, and president, Greg Brockman, from their roles, an unwinding of the company's recent conversion to a more traditional governance structure and damages worth more than $180 billion to be paid into an OpenAI foundation.
In closing arguments, both sides took turns painting the other's client as untrustworthy. "Five witnesses in this trial called him a liar under oath," Musk's lawyer, Steven Molo, said of OpenAI's Altman.
"To succeed in AI, it turns out, all Mr. Musk can do is come to court," OpenAI attorney William Savitt said Thursday.
News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.” [1]
1. Jury Rejects Musk Suit Against OpenAI --- Mogul found to have filed case too late; path clear for chatbot maker to launch IPO. Wells, Georgia; Au-yeung, Angel. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 19 May 2026: A1.
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