Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has had his big-ticket OpenAI lawsuit chucked.
A federal jury voted to dismiss Musk’s noisy lawsuit against OpenAI Group PBC, finding that the 2024 complaint arrived after the statute of limitations had expired.
The nine jurors’ non-binding advisory decision was immediately accepted by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who was presiding over the case. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk originally filed the lawsuit in March 2024, then refiled it with the US District Court for the Northern District of California a few months later.
The complaint centred on a $38 million donation Musk made to OpenAI when it launched in 2015. Musk claimed the ChatGPT outfit breached understandings reached with him by its leadership team.
OpenAI began life as a nonprofit research lab. Musk claimed it had pledged to stay that way, then broke the promise by launching a for-profit arm in 2019.
The complaint said OpenAI had breached a commitment to open-source its large language models.
Musk’s lawsuit described the alleged commitments as a “founding agreement”. OpenAI argued there was no formal founding agreement and said Musk’s $38 million donation had been properly spent.
The trial began on 28 April. During the hearing, OpenAI’s lawyers told the jury Musk’s lawsuit was an attempt to damage a competitor.
Musk launched AI startup xAI a few months before filing the complaint, then folded it into SpaceX Corp in February.
SpaceX and OpenAI are both reportedly hunting for public listings by the end of the year. The ChatGPT developer can list its shares after restructuring its for-profit arm as a public benefit corporation in 2025.
That arm was the focus of the lawsuit, and Musk asked the court to reverse the restructuring.
The lawsuit sought the dismissal of OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman from their roles.
The complaint named the software king of the world, Microsoft, as a plaintiff. Musk accused the software giant of aiding and abetting OpenAI’s alleged breach of the founding agreement.
According to CNBC, Musk wanted a court order forcing OpenAI and Microsoft to hand over as much as $180 billion in “ill-gotten gains.”
The trial lasted about three weeks. Jurors reached their decision after less than two hours of deliberations.
“I think there’s a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury’s finding, which is why I was prepared to dismiss on the spot,” Gonzalez Rogers said.
In a post on X, Musk called the verdict a “calendar technicality” and pledged to appeal. OpenAI welcomed the decision.
