It took a nine-member jury less than two hours to unanimously rule against Elon Musk in his $134 billion lawsuit against OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, ending a three-week-long trial that highlighted the rancor between two of the tech world’s most powerful players and the “chaos” inside an industry leader.
Musk accused the pair of deceptively pivoting to a for-profit enterprise and essentially stealing a charity, while OpenAI lawyers characterized the world’s richest man as bitter over the AI company’s success since his 2018 departure. In addition to monetary damages, Musk sought that Altman and Brockman be removed from their positions and OpenAI unwind its for-profit structure, moves that would have upended the AI giant.
One of the key questions the jury had to consider was whether Musk filed his suit within the three-year statute of limitations, and indeed they found that he did not. While Musk filed his suit in 2024, the “jury found that he was aware of the behavior discussed in his complaint against OpenAI as far back as 2021,” according to the New York Times, and therefore Altman and Brockman are not liable for his claims as well as those against OpenAI backer Microsoft.
