{"id":44896,"date":"2026-05-20T02:49:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T02:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/44896\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T02:49:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T02:49:22","slug":"elon-musk-loses-landmark-lawsuit-against-openai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/44896\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk Loses Landmark Lawsuit Against OpenAI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk suffered the worst defeat possible in his legal battle against OpenAI<\/a> as a federal jury and a judge ruled he waited too long to bring his claims against the AI startup and its top executives, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman.<\/p>\n

While the jury\u2019s decision was a nonbinding recommendation sent to US district judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, she immediately accepted it as her own, making it final.<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s lead trial attorney, Steven Molo, told the judge, \u201cOur intention is to appeal.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of his other attorneys, Marc Toberoff, gave a one-word comment to reporters walking out of the courtroom: \u201cAppeal.\u201d He later said the verdict reminded him of American Revolutionary War moments like the Siege of Charleston and the Battle of Bunker Hill. \u201cThese were major losses for Americans, but who won the war?\u201d Toberoff said. \u201cAnd this one is not over.\u201d<\/p>\n

OpenAI\u2019s attorneys hugged in the courtroom after the verdict was read. William Savitt, the company\u2019s lead litigator, told reporters that the \u201coverwhelming\u201d amount of evidence presented in the case allowed the jury to act quickly. \u201cThe evidence that Mr. Musk\u2019s lawsuit was an after-the-fact contrivance by a competitor was overwhelming,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Throughout the trial, Gonzalez Rogers questioned Musk\u2019s motivation for fighting OpenAI. But she concluded on Monday that the three-week global public spectacle had been worthwhile.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was an important issue to be tried \u2026 for us to have a trial to bring clarity,\u201d she told attorneys for both parties. \u201cThere\u2019s a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury\u2019s findings, which is why I was prepared to accept the jury\u2019s findings and dismiss on the spot.\u201d<\/p>\n

The nine-member panel<\/a> delivered the unanimous verdict in an Oakland, California, courtroom on Monday after deliberating for under two hours. They found that statutes of limitations expired well before Musk filed his lawsuit<\/a> in 2024. Musk had hoped to persuade the jury that Altman and Brockman, with the help of Microsoft\u2019s cash, transformed OpenAI into an enormous company well beyond what was envisioned when the three of them and others founded it as a nonprofit nearly 11 years ago.<\/p>\n

Because the jury found the case wasn\u2019t filed on time, it didn\u2019t weigh in on Musk\u2019s three claims, including breach of charitable trust, unjust enrichment, and, against Microsoft, aiding and abetting. Losing on what amounts to a technicality could provide Musk an opening to keep trying his case in the public by arguing that the jury never ruled against his core argument that a charity was stolen.<\/p>\n

Savitt, the OpenAI lawyer, disputed that contention on Monday. \u201cIt’s not a technical decision, it’s a substantive one,\u201d he said. \u201cIt says you brought your claims too late, and you did it because you were sitting on them to use them as a weapon of a competitor who can’t compete in the marketplace, and so we’re delighted with the outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

Microsoft spokesperson Alex Haurek said in a statement that the \u201cfacts and the timeline in this case have long been clear\u201d and the tech giant remains \u201ccommitted to our work with OpenAI to advance and scale AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

In posts<\/a> on X<\/a>, Musk called Gonzalez Rogers an \u201cactivist\u201d judge \u201cwho simply used the jury as a fig leaf\u201d and ruled on a \u201ccalendar technicality.\u201d While the judge\u2019s ruling doesn\u2019t create a formal legal precedent, Musk claimed that, \u201cShe just handed out a free license to loot charities if you can keep the looting quiet for a few years!\u201d He added in a separate post, \u201cThere is no question to anyone following the case in detail that Altman & Brockman did in fact enrich themselves by stealing a charity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk suffered the worst defeat possible in his legal battle against OpenAI as a federal jury and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44897,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[25,140,2033,16087,157,370],"class_list":["post-44896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-openai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-elon-musk","tag-model-behavior","tag-musk-v-altman-trial","tag-openai","tag-sam-altman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}