WHAT JUST HAPPENED? Elon Musk isn't accustomed to losing, but the world's richest man just felt the sting of defeat in his trial against OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman, and President Greg Brockman. A federal jury said that Musk had waited too long to file his suit, which accused the defendants of violating an agreement to keep OpenAI as a charitable non-profit organization.
Musk was one of the co-founders, backers, and initial board members of OpenAI. He claims that when he was approached by Altman and Brockman to help fund the startup in 2015, he was promised that it would be an open-source, not-for-profit company focused on safely creating artificial general intelligence (AGI) and countering the competitive threat from Google.
Musk's 2024 lawsuit alleged that Altman and Brockman turned OpenAI into a profit-driven, closed-source AI firm whose relationship with Microsoft helped enrich its executives and partners. Musk was seeking damages and wanted Altman and Brockman removed from OpenAI. As the lawsuit stated:
"OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft."
The jury, which had been serving in an "advisory" capacity, took less than two hours to rule against Musk after a three-week trial in Oakland. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers agreed with the verdict and dismissed Musk's claims of breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment as untimely.
