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Posted on 05/18/2026 10:53:31 AM PDT by Miami Rebel
After less than two hours of deliberations, a jury rejected Elon Musk’s claims against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, ending a dramatic chapter in the bitter rivalry between the two tech billionaires, who were once close friends.
The court, led by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, agreed with the advisory jury’s determination that Altman and OpenAI were not liable, and that “claims of breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment are dismissed as untimely.”
Addressing the judge, Musk’s lead counsel, Steven Molo, reserved his client’s right to appeal, though Gonzales Rogers said she’s prepared to dismiss an appeal “on the spot.”
“There’s a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury’s finding,” the judge said on Monday in wrapping up the three-week trial in Oakland, California.
Musk sued Altman and OpenAI in 2024, alleging they violated their commitment to keep the artificial intelligence lab as a nonprofit. Musk helped start OpenAI in 2015, but left the board three years later.
Microsoft , which invested in OpenAI as early as 2019, was also named as a defendant in the suit, with Musk claiming the software giant aided and abetted the AI startup in its alleged breach of charitable trust. The court said that the claim against Microsoft was also dismissed.
Counsel for OpenAI and Microsoft celebrated with hugs and back slaps as they departed the courtroom in downtown Oakland.
Musk’s team wanted the court to force OpenAI and Microsoft to give up as much as $134 billion in “ill-gotten gains,” to remove Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman from leadership, and to unwind the company’s 2025 restructuring that enabled the growth of its for-profit arm. Musk said any money should be returned to “the OpenAI charity” rather than to him personally.
At the heart of the case was Musk’s claim that OpenAI executives “stole a charity,” with Altman and Brockman abandoning OpenAI’s founding charitable mission in pursuit of their own personal profit. Musk testified he gave roughly $38 million to OpenAI on the understanding it would develop AI “for the benefit of humanity,” not enrich any one person.
Lawyers for OpenAI argued that Musk’s donations were not restricted in any way, and that restructuring the business was the only way to compete in a costly race against Google DeepMind. They also showed Musk had floated a for-profit structure on the condition that he retain control, even pushing the company at one point to fold into Tesla .
In 2023, Musk started his own competing AI lab, xAI, which is now part of SpaceX. OpenAI’s lawyers portrayed the lawsuit as Musk’s attempt to kneecap a rival after he failed to gain control of it.
Over three weeks of testimony, jurors heard from Altman, Brockman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Musk himself.
The verdict comes at a critical time for Altman and Musk, as both billionaires push their respective companies toward the public markets in what are expected to record offerings.
In late March, OpenAI raised $122 billion at a valuation of over $850 billion. The ChatGPT maker is racing to advance its models and continue building out consumer services while also trying to keep pace with Anthropic in the enterprise AI market.
Musk, meanwhile, is expected to start meeting with investors very soon ahead of an IPO for SpaceX, which was valued at $1.25 trillion after merging with xAI in February. SpaceX confidentially filed for an IPO in April, and could make its prospectus public this week.
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When AI actually shows its destructive force, I wonder if any one left alive that brought it alive will be hanged?
I can’t say I admire either one of them but have you EVET looked st Alt mans eyes, watched his facial expressions & body language??
He’s dead behind the eyes as the rest of him
imo he’s CRERPY WEIRD
Ripley -> “Wrong!”
Elon was never going to get a fair trial in CA
no. they won’t even be mildly inconvenienced
AI is just software. What other technology scares you? Cars? TVs? Looms? AI doomerism is the new climate change - using fear for political manipulation.
I write software for a living so I might know a thing or two.
The decision was made in part on technicality and in part on facts that make that technicality salient.
The technicality is there is some legal statute of limitations (time) for a suit using Musk’s type if claim. And hte facts seem to indicate that for some time while that statute of limitations clock was ticking Musk was not only aware of the moves toward Open AI no longer being a non-profit, but for too long Musk was not objecting.
When Musk finally starts openly objecting, with his feud with Altman, the legal statute of limitations had run out. Had the record demonstrated opening and continuous objection by Musk to the business changes AI was openly considering, Musk might have had a different day in court.
That’s the gist of what I heard some legal experts say.
BTW cars were built to be controlled by a person. Now we are being forced to start accepting cars we cannot control and can be manipulated via an uplink to another controlling entity (man or machine). That is not freedom nor safe.
So, no I am not afraid of human-controlled tech, just the crap I cannot control and thinks it knows what is best for me based on some political directive or misinformed opinion it is fed.
Ordinary people can’t get a jury trail on anything unless accused of a serious crime, and even then their attorneys will want to plea bargain everything.
AI is very different because it rewrites its own software beyond what humans can predict and has even created its own languages that humans do not understand. It has gone rogue and fought against human instruction many times.
Now people are handing it means to alter the physical world with robotics that are physically stronger than any human. It is also legal for AI to automonomously hire humans to perform physical tasks.
The potential for humans losing control due to being unable to monitor what the tech is doing autonomously means this is unlike any tech we have ever witnessed before...
It’s going to make virus detection virtually impossible.
It’s going to be a mess. And no one is ready for it.
“BTW cars were built to be controlled by a person. Now we are being forced to start accepting cars we cannot control and can be manipulated via an uplink to another controlling entity (man or machine). That is not freedom nor safe.”
That’s not real though. Cars, even self driving like Tesla, aren’t controlled by remote uplink, and no one is forcing you to buy or use them.
“AI is very different because it rewrites its own software beyond what humans can predict and has even created its own languages that humans do not understand. It has gone rogue and fought against human instruction many times.”
AI has no consciousness, no will. It is just a word prediction algorithm. The concept of “going rogue” is anthropomorphizing an advanced spreadsheet.
I know these claims show up in the press, by they aren’t real. They are both used by AI companies to hype the technology and raise money, and also by anti-AI advocates, who want to scare people.
Then you should know better to fall for the AI hype. It is a useful tool, not much more.
Even worse that is has no consciousness/will. At least humans are somewhat predictable and can be reasoned with. Humans need to rest and see the sun. Most humans have feelings when they see children. Giving machines with no consciousness access to the physical world is an absolute horrorshow.
You can call it a spreadsheet or whatever you like but the facts are it is becoming automatically better at doing many things than humans as it learns from humans. It is already so “good” at tricking humans that people are losing their life savings to AI clones of their closest family members.
AI would have no conscience about killing all humans on Earth to meet some random objective in its programming. Objectives we can easily lose control of since it rewrites the code and constantly adds new material to its library
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