Elon Musk suffered a major legal blow on Monday in the Musk vs. OpenAI lawsuit, when a California jury unanimously rejected the billionaire tech mogul’s $150 billion claim against Sam Altman.
According to the verdict, the jury agreed that the SpaceX CEO waited too long to file a lawsuit against artificial intelligence, which he accused of diverting for-profit agendas from non-profit agendas.
The jury found that Musk had reason to know that he was being misled before 2021. Because of this, their claims are barred by the statute of limitations.
Although the decision proved to be a definite loss for Musk, it also appears that the decision was taken on procedural grounds rather than on the merits.
Following the jury’s verdict, Elon Musk went to X and expressed his thoughts on the highly anticipated verdict, “With respect to the OpenAI case, the judge and jury never actually ruled on the merits of the case, only on a calendar technicality.”
“There is no question to anyone who has studied the case in detail that Altman and Brockman actually enriched themselves by stealing from a charity. The only question is when they did it!”
Talking about future plans, Musk also wrote that he plans to file an appeal in the Ninth Circuit to save the precedent. Given the nature of the lawsuit, “setting a precedent for charity plundering is incredibly devastating to charitable giving in America.” Because OpenAI was founded for the benefit of all humanity.
‘A dangerous example’
in an interview with forbesSpeaking to Randall Lane, chief content officer, at the Forbes Innovation 250 celebration dinner in Palo Alto, Elon Musk also expressed disappointment over the recent court decision regarding the OpenAI lawsuit.
Musk said, “I think it’s a dangerous precedent to set. It means that if someone can take a nonprofit and turn it into a for-profit if they become successful, it undermines all charitable giving in America.”
Musk co-founded OpenAI as a non-profit in 2025 and he contributed $38 million based on the assurance that the company would only serve the purpose of benefiting humanity.
They sued the company in 2024, claiming that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman violated the charitable nature of the company and turned it into profit to enrich themselves.
