Jury says Elon Musk was too late in case against Sam Altman

A California federal jury unanimously rejected Elon Musk’s claims against OpenAI and its co-founder Sam Altman, ending the latest chapter in a nearly decade-long feud. © Markus Schreiber and Czarek Sokolowski, Associated Press The advisory verdict took less than two hours of deliberation from the jury, which listened to three weeks of testimony, including from both Musk, Altman, OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. The nine-person jury told the court Musk took too long to file the lawsuit, missing the deadline for the three-year statute of limitations. As expected, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers agreed with the jury, throwing out all of Musk’s claims. Musk announced on X later Monday he plans to file an appeal with the Ninth Circuit Court, “because creating a precedent to loot charities is incredibly destructive to charitable giving in America.” OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the NYT reported William Savitt, the company’s lead counsel, said outside the courthouse he was “delighted” by the verdict. The verdict is a major blow to Musk, who ratcheted up the dispute in 2024 by suing over OpenAI’s alleged shift away from its founding mission. Musk and Altman founded OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015 with former Stripe executive Brockman, computer scientist Ilya Sutskever and others. The Tesla CEO joined forces with Altman and the others to launch the company as he voiced concerns about AI safety. Musk argued he was misled by the company when they decided to create a for-profit entity to get more capital for AI development, and put commercial interests over its original mission focused on humanity. But he did not file his lawsuit until 2024, alleging OpenAI, Altman and Brockman manipulated the billionaire into co-founding and financially backing the venture before abandoning its original nonprofit mission. Monday’s verdict is a significant victory for OpenAI as it plans to launch an initial public offering in late 2026. Should the jury have sided with Musk, the case was largely expected to at least delay what is expected to be one of the largest public offerings in history. Read more in a full report at TheHill.com Welcome to The Hill’s Technology newsletter, we’re Julia Shapero and Miranda Nazzaro — tracking the latest moves from Capitol Hill to Silicon Valley. Did someone forward you this newsletter? Subscribe here.