Jury dismisses Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman

The nine-member advisory jury in Musk v. Altman returned its verdict after less than two hours of deliberation, finding Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and OpenAI not liable on Elon Musk’s remaining claims of breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment. The jury’s reasoning turned on timing rather than substance: it found Musk’s claims fell outside a three-year statute of limitations, having concluded he was aware of the conduct he later challenged well before he filed suit in February 2024. The verdict did not address whether OpenAI’s 2019 restructuring and subsequent conversion to a public-benefit corporation had, in fact, breached commitments made to Musk as an early funder.

At trial, Musk had argued his concerns only fully crystallised in 2023, particularly after Microsoft’s large investments in OpenAI’s for-profit arm made the scale of the shift apparent. OpenAI’s lawyers countered that Musk had known for years the company intended to pursue a commercial structure and raise substantial outside capital, and had at points endorsed that direction himself. Because the jury sat in an advisory capacity, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers was not formally bound by its verdict, but she said she would accept it, closing the case at the trial-court level.

Musk called the outcome a “calendar technicality” on X and said he would appeal to the Ninth Circuit. The ruling let OpenAI avoid both the damages Musk had sought — up to $134 billion, which he had asked be directed to OpenAI’s nonprofit — and any court-ordered change to its governance or Altman’s position on the board. Coming three weeks after OpenAI and Microsoft had renegotiated their own partnership, the verdict removed one of the clearer legal threats to OpenAI’s restructured corporate form as it moved toward a possible public listing, though Musk’s promised appeal left the underlying dispute over the company’s founding promises unresolved.