A federal grand jury dismissed Elon Musk‘s claims that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was abandoning the company’s original humanitarian mission in a ruling on Monday.
The jury unanimously decided that all of Musk’s claims were not brought in a timely manner within the statute of limitations, and thus Altman could not be held liable.
WHAT ELON MUSK’S LAWSUIT AGAINST SAM ALTMAN COULD CHANGE ABOUT THE AI INDUSTRY
The ruling is a major blow to Musk, who brought the lawsuit against his former friend and co-founder of OpenAI, a company they built together with other artificial intelligence industry leaders.
Musk’s lawsuit centered on the fact that Altman transitioned OpenAI away from its nonprofit model to a for-profit company, arguing that Altman prioritized monetary gain over the original beneficial mission. The ChatGPT parent company first announced a for-profit subsidiary in 2019 and fully transitioned to the for-profit model in 2025.
The high-profile trial drew intense media coverage as AI playmakers and reporters awaited to see how the results would reshape the fast-expanding industry. Musk was seeking hundreds of billions of dollars in damages from the defendants, including Microsoft, a partner of OpenAI. Musk also demanded Altman’s removal from OpenAI’s board and the removal of its for-profit status.
With this result, Altman would keep his role directing the AI powerhouse and OpenAI would remain a for-profit institution. However, Musk could appeal the ruling, which was agreed upon by Obama-appointed District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in the Northern District of California, to a higher court.
“There’s a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury’s finding,” Gonzalez Rogers said.
Though Musk helped found OpenAI, he left the company in 2018 and founded a new AI chatbot company of his own in 2023 called xAI, which is tied to X (formerly twitter). Musk’s Grok and Altman’s ChatGPT are now top competitors in the AI chatbot space. Musk’s xAI is also a for-profit company.
“The facts and the timeline in this case have long been clear, and we welcome the jury’s decision to dismiss these claims as untimely. We remain committed to our work with OpenAI to advance and scale AI for people and organizations around the world,” a Microsoft spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
OpenAI has called Musk’s decision to sue Altman one that was “motivated by jealousy, regret for walking away from OpenAI and a desire to derail a competing AI company.”
The Washington Examiner has reached out to OpenAI and xAI for comment.
MUSK WARNS AGAINST ‘TERMINATOR OUTCOME’ IN OPENAI TESTIMONY: ‘IT COULD KILL US ALL’
Musk’s testimony in the case against OpenAI’s humanitarian mission caught widespread public attention as he warned of his “extreme concerns” about AI and said that the day when the technology could surpass human intelligence “is approaching fast.”
“It could kill us all,” Musk said about AI in his testimony. “We don’t want to have a Terminator outcome. We want to be in a Gene Roddenberry outcome, like Star Trek. Not so much a James Cameron movie like Terminator.”