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Primary Sources
Jury unanimously dismisses Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI due to ...
By Updated on: May 18, 2026 / 2:15 PM EDT / CBS News Add CBS News on Google A California jury unanimously dismissed claims against OpenAI and Sam Altman on Monday due to the statute of limitations, delivering a victory to the AI company and its founder in a high-stakes case brought by Elon Musk.The nine-person jury found that Musk missed the three-year statute of limitations. OpenAI had argued that Musk waited too long and could not claim damages from before August 2021.The decision caps a three-week trial in an Oakland courtroom, pitting Altman against Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX.Both Altman and Musk testified during the trial, along with OpenAI and Microsoft executives and legal experts. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers presided over the case, with the jury serving in an advisory role.Musk was seeking $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and Altman's removal from company leadership. A decision in Musk's favor could also have forced changes to OpenAI's business structure and thrown a wrench into the company's plan to go public, expected later this year. Musk's legal team and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment."Stealing a charity"?The case stemmed from a lawsuit Musk, the world's richest man, brought in 2024, alleging that OpenAI, Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman broke their promise to keep the company a nonprofit, instead turning it into a money-making venture that is now valued at $852 billion. The case was a "textbook tale of altruism versus greed," Musk said in his suit.Microsoft, which formed a partnership with OpenAI in 2019, was also named as a defendant."The biggest focus of the trial around if OpenAI broke its charitable mission when they spun off its for-profit arm and accepted an investment from Microsoft for its AI technology is now mostly alleviated as it takes a worst-case scenario off the table," WedBush Securities analyst Dan Ives said in a report. Musk, who helped co-found OpenAI, invested $38 million in the company during its early years, which he argued was intended for charitable purposes. In his suit, the billionaire claimed OpenAI breached its charitable trust and that Altman and Brockman enriched themselves at his expense. Musk also accused Microsoft of aiding and abetting the trust breach. "It's not OK to steal a charity," Musk said during his testimony. The head of SpaceX and Tesla missed the tail end of the trial to join President Trump and a delegation of billionaire U.S. executives for ...
Jury dismisses all claims in Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI ... - 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. Vásquez/AP hide caption toggle caption Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP OAKLAND, Calif. - A jury in California took less than two hours to decide that Elon Musk waited too long to file a lawsuit against his one-time business partner Sam Altman over the direction he's steered the artificial intelligence company OpenAI since the two had a falling out nearly a decade ago. In a unanimous decision, the nine-member advisory jury said Musk was beyond 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, tossing the case out. "I've always said I would accept the jury's verdict," Gonzalez Rogers said after issuing her decision. "I think there's a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury's finding." The decision brings a swift end to a three-week trial that laid bare the fears and ambitions that led two of Silicon Valley's biggest personalities to team up 11 years ago to launch OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and then to part ways after a dispute over how to run it. In determining that the suit was filed too late, the jury sidestepped questions at the heart of Musk's case accusing Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman of committing a "breach of charitable trust" by allegedly jettisoning OpenAI's founding mission, and then profiting from the decision — claims they disputed in court. OpenAI was established in 2015 as a nonprofit 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 AI being controlled by any one person or for-profit company. But by 2017, the founders were convinced they needed to set up a for-profit arm of OpenAI to raise money and attract researchers in order to be competitive. Musk wanted control, but the others disagreed, and he left the board in 2018. In court, he claimed that Altman "stole a charity" by creating a for-profit entity that became, in his words, "the main thing" at OpenAI. Lawyers for OpenAI argued that Musk in fact supported the creation of a for-profit subsidiary with the goal of attracting big investments. They argued that, rather than being motivated by a commitment to OpenAI's original mission, Musk was unhappy that it did so well without him. A year a...
Jury rules against Musk in court battle against Sam Altman, OpenAI - CNBC
A jury in Oakland, California, ruled against Elon Musk in his dramatic court battle with Sam Altman and OpenAI.
Jury tosses Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman
OAKLAND, Calif. — A jury on Monday found that tech billionaire Elon Musk waited too long to bring his lawsuit against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, throwing out the suit that claimed Altman had ...