MAY 18, 2026
Jury rules Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI was filed too late, dismissing all claims
A nine-member advisory jury in Oakland, California, unanimously ruled on Monday that Elon Musk waited too long to sue OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman, and president Greg Brockman, finding all claims barred by the statute of limitations. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California accepted the jury's verdict and dismissed the case. Deliberations lasted less than two hours.
The verdict ended a three-week trial stemming from Musk's February 2024 lawsuit alleging that Altman and Brockman "stole a charity" by transitioning OpenAI away from its founding nonprofit structure. Musk, who helped co-found OpenAI in 2015 and contributed $38 million in early funding, had sought to force OpenAI and Microsoft to return up to $150 billion to OpenAI's nonprofit foundation, remove Altman and Brockman from their leadership roles, and unwind the company's for-profit restructuring. Microsoft was also named as a co-defendant for its investments in OpenAI totaling $13 billion between 2019 and 2023; that claim was likewise dismissed.
By finding the lawsuit untimely, the jury did not reach the underlying questions of whether OpenAI breached a charitable trust. OpenAI's attorneys argued that Musk was aware of the conduct at issue as early as 2021 — more than three years before he filed suit — and that his donations carried no conditions requiring OpenAI to remain a nonprofit. They also argued that Musk had at various points supported the creation of a for-profit subsidiary and had sought control of that entity before leaving the board in 2018. Musk launched his own AI company, xAI, in 2023, approximately a year and a half before filing the lawsuit. Judge Gonzalez Rogers said after the verdict, "I think there's a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury's finding."
The trial produced a significant volume of evidence, including hundreds of pages of private emails, text messages, internal meeting notes, and Brockman's personal diaries, according to CNN. Texts between Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussing a possible joint effort to acquire OpenAI were also submitted as evidence. High-profile witnesses included OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever and Shivon Zilis, an executive at Musk's companies whose testimony, CNN reported, revealed the duration and nature of her personal relationship with Musk and her role as a conduit between Musk and OpenAI after his departure.