TL;DRA nine-person jury in Oakland unanimously found that Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI was filed too late, ending the trial on statute of limitations grounds without reaching the merits. The advisory verdict, if adopted by the judge, clears a major legal obstacle for OpenAI’s IPO path.
Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, OpenAI, and Microsoft. A nine-person jury in Oakland returned a unanimous verdict on Sunday finding that Musk’s claims had been filed too late under the statute of limitations, ending the most consequential corporate governance trial in the history of artificial intelligence without reaching the merits of whether OpenAI’s leaders had “stolen a charity.”
The verdict is advisory, meaning Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the Northern District of California will make the final determination on liability. But she indicated before deliberations began that she would very likely follow the jury’s recommendation. If she does, Musk’s bid to remove Altman from OpenAI, unwind the company’s $852 billion restructuring, and direct up to $134 billion in disgorgement to OpenAI’s nonprofit foundation is effectively over.
What the jury decided
