OAKLAND, Calif. — Jurors on Monday handed Elon Musk a loss in the landmark trial over the future of OpenAI — finding that the world’s richest person brought his case too late.
The unanimous verdict, which the nine-member federal jury reached less than two hours after it began deliberations Monday, determined that Musk filed his suit after the statute of limitations had expired.
Musk said he would appeal the verdict, which caps three weeks of proceedings that captivated Silicon Valley and beyond and featured some of the biggest names in tech.
For now, the outcome avoids a potential shakeup of the AI landscape at a critical moment. Musk is planning a public share offering for SpaceX, which merged with his own AI startup. OpenAI, meanwhile, is also racing toward an IPO.
Along with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the company’s president Greg Brockman and Musk, the trial featured testimony from Musk adviser and romantic partner Shivon Zilis, OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Musk — who donated $38 million to OpenAI years before launching his own high-profile artificial intelligence project, xAI — sought about $150 billion in damages and a court order unwinding OpenAI’s for-profit status.
The Tesla exec insisted Monday he was in the right.
“[T]he judge & jury never actually ruled on the merits of the case, just on a calendar technicality,” he wrote on his social media platform X.
“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!”
Vincent Joralemon, a senior fellow at UC Berkeley law school, said statutes of limitation vary by state and in California there is a three-year limit for breach of charitable trust and a two-year limit for unjust enrichment – two of the key claims Musk brought.
“I’m guessing the jurors got into their room and said, ‘does it seem like Musk knew about this in 2019?’ and everyone said ‘yes’ and then they go, ‘we’re done,’” Joralemon said.
SpaceX’s IPO this year could benefit “if he can make the public dislike Open AI and Sam Altman or create a lot of uncertainty in the market around Open AI,” Joralemon added.
Altman’s trustworthiness was central to Musk’s case. Musk’s legal team leaned heavily on testimony from key OpenAI figures — including former board members Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner as well as Murati — who said Altman didn’t always tell the truth.
“My concern was about Sam saying one thing to one person and completely the opposite to another person,” Murati said in taped testimony played to a packed Oakland, Calif., federal courtroom.
Musk’s lawsuit alleged that Brockman, Altman and OpenAI violated the company’s charitable mission when it launched a for-profit entity and raised billions to help it grow into the juggernaut it is today. The suit also accused Microsoft of aiding and abetting the scheme by pumping some $13 billion into OpenAI’s for-profit arm.
In his testimony during the trial’s first week, Musk said, “This lawsuit is very simple: It is not OK to steal a charity.” Musk repeated versions of the phrase throughout his time on the witness stand.
Musk also at one point texted Altman after news of one of Microsoft’s investments into OpenAI became public, calling the agreement a “bait and switch.”
Altman and the other defendants countered that Musk was well aware of and even supported OpenAI’s for-profit endeavors. Altman’s lawyers provided evidence that appeared to show Musk agreeing that an entity that could raise cash in exchange for equity was needed to compete with the likes of Google.
Brockman detailed a 2017 meeting in a Musk mansion where he and other OpenAI top brass including Altman, head of technology Mira Murati and Zilis showed up. Whiskey was served, Brockman testified, the OpenAI group discussed a for-profit entity and the conversation was “celebratory.”
An attorney who has represented large tech companies but is not involved in the OpenAI suit said he believed Musk’s case grew stronger throughout the trial. He specifically cited Altman’s time on the stand getting hammered by Musk’s lawyer about whether he was trustworthy.
“Musk has more of a case here than previously thought,” said the expert, who attended most of the proceedings. “The first 15 minutes of Altman’s cross-examination were devastating.”
Musk lawyer Steven Molo sought to hammer the point home when addressing the jurors in his closing arguments last week: “Imagine that you’re on a hike, and you come upon one of those wooden bridges that you see on a trail and it’s over a gorge,” Molo said inside the federal courtroom.
“There’s a river that’s 100 feet below and it looks a little scary, but a woman standing by the entry to the bridge says, ‘Don’t worry, the bridge is built on Sam Altman’s version of the truth.’
“Would you walk across that bridge? I don’t think many people would,” the lawyer added.
Altman addressed Musk’s “steal a charity” line in his testimony last week: “It feels difficult to even wrap my head around that framing.”
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