Jury throws out Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI after less than two hours of deliberation — Unanimous vote that Musk filed the lawsuit too late

A federal jury in Oakland, California, on Monday unanimously rejected every claim in Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman, co-founder Greg Brockman, and Microsoft. The nine-member jury found that Musk filed too late, with all claims barred by the statute of limitations. Deliberations began at 8:30 a.m. Pacific and ended at 10:23 a.m. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers immediately accepted the verdict as her own.

Musk had sought around $130 billion in damages paid to OpenAI's nonprofit arm, the removal of Altman and Brockman from their leadership roles, and the dismantling of the for-profit entity that has turned OpenAI into an $852 billion company. The jury's finding on timeliness meant it never reached the underlying question of whether Altman and Brockman breached their duty to OpenAI's original nonprofit mission.

The case ultimately hinged on when Musk became aware of the alleged breach: California law imposes a three-year window for charitable trust claims and a two-year window for unjust enrichment. Musk testified that he waited to sue because he believed Altman's reassurances over the years, and that Microsoft's $10 billion investment in OpenAI's for-profit arm in 2023 was the moment he concluded the charity had been "stolen".

OpenAI's attorneys countered that Musk had known about the for-profit transition since at least 2017 and had even pushed for it himself, registering a company through his family office intended to serve as a for-profit version of OpenAI. "There's a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury's finding, which is why I was prepared to dismiss on the spot," Judge Gonzalez Rogers said after the verdict.

While Musk's legal team reserves the right to appeal, the judge suggested that it would be difficult because the statute of limitations question was a factual determination, not a legal ruling. The verdict ultimately removes the most prominent legal threat to OpenAI's ongoing restructuring from a nonprofit into a for-profit public benefit corporation.

The company closed a $122 billion funding round in March at an $852 billion valuation, with $30 billion from Nvidia, $50 billion from Amazon, and $30 billion from SoftBank. OpenAI has been preparing for a potential Q4 2026 IPO, though analysts at PitchBook recently suggested the timeline could slip into 2027 given the company's cost structure and $1.15 trillion in long-term infrastructure commitments.

Microsoft, which invested $13 billion in OpenAI between 2019 and 2023 and was named as a co-defendant for allegedly aiding the breach, was also cleared by the jury on the same statute of limitations grounds. "The finding of the jury confirms that what this lawsuit was was a hypocritical attempt to sabotage a competitor," OpenAI attorney William Savitt told reporters outside the courthouse, according to CNN.

Neither Musk, Altman, nor Brockman was present in court to hear the verdict. The three-week trial featured testimony from six tech billionaires, including OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, and hundreds of pages of private emails, text messages, and internal meeting notes entered into evidence.

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