Jury rules against Elon Musk in his feud with OpenAI, saying he filed his lawsuit too late

OAKLAND, Calif. — A federal jury on Monday sided with OpenAI and its top executives in a feud with Elon Musk, who accused them of betraying a shared vision for it to guide artificial intelligence’s development as a nonprofit dedicated to humanity’s benefit.

Musk, the world’s richest man, was a co-founder of OpenAI, the company that launched in 2015 and went on to create ChatGPT. After investing $38 million in its first years, Musk accused OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and his top deputy of shifting into a moneymaking mode behind his back.

The nine-person jury found that Musk waited too long to file his lawsuit and missed the deadline for the statute of limitations.

The jury served in an advisory role, but Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers accepted the verdict Monday as the court’s own and dismissed Musk’s claims. The jury deliberated only two hours before returning its verdict.

The trial that began April 27 in Oakland, California shed light on the bitter falling-out between the two Silicon Valley titans and the beginnings of OpenAI, now a company valued at $852 billion and moving toward potentially one of the largest initial public offerings in history.

Altman and OpenAI claimed there was never a promise to keep OpenAI a nonprofit forever. In fact, they argued, Musk knew this and filed his lawsuit because he couldn’t have unilateral control over the fast-growing AI developer.

Musk was seeking damages to be paid to the altruistic efforts of OpenAI’s charitable arm as well as Altman’s ouster from OpenAI’s board. Musk’s decision to stop funding the company contributed to a bitter rift between the former allies. Musk says he was responding to deceptive conduct that OpenAI’s board picked up on when it fired Altman as CEO in 2023 before he got his job back days later.

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