Elon Musk’s $150 billion lawsuit against his fellow OpenAI founders died a quick and unceremonious death Monday.
After spending more than three weeks listening to witnesses, including Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, the nine-member Oakland jury took just two hours to decide Musk’s case had no merit — based entirely on its timing.
Musk was seeking damages over OpenAI’s conversion from a nonprofit to a for-profit enterprise run by a nonprofit board. He claimed that a $10 billion Microsoft investment in 2023 was when he realized the ChatGPT maker was straying from the original terms of its charitable foundation.
But much of the courtroom drama turned on whether his lawsuit fell within the statute of limitations for such a case. Musk’s team strained to prove that he wasn’t worried about Microsoft “capturing” OpenAI before 2023 — despite a 2020 tweet from Musk that said exactly that, to take just one example.
Musk’s lawyers at the courthouse Monday told reporters they will appeal the verdict.
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In theory, the jury’s decision was advisory — meaning federal judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers could still have ruled in Musk’s favor if she disagreed. But Rogers concurred, tossing the lawsuit.
Rogers showed herself to be no great friend to Musk during the trial, reminding the billionaire that he was “not a lawyer” despite him taking Law 101 in college.
Musk also didn’t help his case by absconding to China last week, when the judge had required him to stay close in case he needed to testify again. Counsel for Altman and the other co-founders made hay out of this fact in their closing arguments, noting that their clients had actually shown up.
The jury seemed sympathetic to OpenAI’s attorney then, and the speed of their verdict has confirmed their sympathies.
OpenAI emerges unscathed. The company will continue its march to a potential $1 trillion IPO — one of the most anticipated public offerings of the decade. Altman has cause to celebrate too, despite Musk’s counsel painting him as fundamentally untrustworthy (echoing a recent New Yorker investigation) and causing him to confirm for the first time he does have an equity stake in OpenAI.
Musk hasn’t tweeted since the trial verdict came in. Altman, meanwhile, merely congratulated the ChatGPT team on its latest build.
