Federal jury rules against Elon Musk in closely watched OpenAI trial
A federal jury today voted to dismiss Elon Musk’s high-profile lawsuit against OpenAI Group PBC.
The nine jurors found that the complaint, which Musk filed in 2024, was brought after the statute of limitations had expired. The non-binding advisory decision was immediately accepted by the judge presiding over the case.
Musk originally brought the lawsuit in March 2024 and refiled it with the US District Court for the Northern District of California (pictured) a few months later. The complaint revolved around a $38 million donation he had made to OpenAI at the time of its 2015 launch. According to the lawsuit, the ChatGPT developer breached a set of understandings that its leadership team reached with Musk.
OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit research lab. According to Musk, the artificial intelligence provider pledged to continue operating as a non-profit but broke the promise when it launched a for-profit arm in 2019. Furthermore, the complaint accused OpenAI of breaching a commitment to open-source its large language models.
