Elon Musk Loses Lawsuit Against OpenAI (reuters.com)
- Reference: 0183270731
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/18/1845222/elon-musk-loses-lawsuit-against-openai
- Source link: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/elon-musk-loses-lawsuit-against-openai-2026-05-18/
> The trial had widely been seen as a critical moment for the future of OpenAI and artificial intelligence generally, both in how it should be used and who should benefit from it. Following the verdict, Musk's lawyer said he reserved the right to appeal, but the judge suggested he may have an uphill battle because whether the statute of limitations ran out before Musk sued was a factual issue. "There's a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury's finding, which is why I was prepared to dismiss on the spot," U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said.
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> In his 2024 lawsuit, Musk accused OpenAI, its Chief Executive Sam Altman and its President Greg Brockman of manipulating him into giving $38 million, then going behind his back by attaching a for-profit business to its original nonprofit and accepting tens of billions of dollars from Microsoft and other investors. Musk called the OpenAI defendants' conduct "stealing a charity." OpenAI was founded by Altman, Musk and several others in 2015. Musk left its board in 2018, and OpenAI set up a for-profit business the next year. OpenAI countered that it was Musk who saw dollar signs, and that he waited too long to claim OpenAI breached its founding agreement to build safe artificial intelligence to benefit humanity. "Mr. Musk may have the Midas touch in some areas, but not in AI," William Savitt, a lawyer for OpenAI, said in his closing argument.
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> The verdict followed 11 days of testimony and arguments where Musk's and Altman's credibility came under repeated attack. Lawyers for OpenAI embraced each other after the verdict was announced. Microsoft faced an aiding and abetting claim. In a statement, a Microsoft spokesperson said, "The facts and the timeline in this case have long been clear and we welcome the jury's decision to dismiss these claims as untimely."
Recap:
[8]Musk Accused of 'Selective Amnesia', Altman of Lying As OpenAI Trial Nears End (Day Twelve)
[9]OpenAI Trial Wraps Up With 'Jackass' Trophy For Challenging Musk (Day Eleven)
[10]Sam Altman Testifies That Elon Musk Wanted Control of OpenAI (Day Ten)
[11]Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Testifies In OpenAI Trial (Day Nine)
[12]Sam Altman Had a Bad Day In Court (Day Eight)
[13]Sam Altman's Management Style Comes Under the Microscope At OpenAI Trial (Day Seven)
[14]Brockman Rebuts Musk's Take On Startup's History, Recounts Secret Work For Tesla (Day Six)
[15]OpenAI President Discloses His Stake In the Company Is Worth $30 Billion (Day Five)
[16]Musk Concludes Testimony At OpenAI Trial (Day Four)
[17]Elon Musk Says OpenAI Betrayed Him, Clashes With Company's Attorney (Day Three)
[18]Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google (Day Two)
[19]Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Head To Court (Day One)
[1] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/04/29/0311202/musk-testifies-openai-was-created-as-nonprofit-to-counter-google
[2] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/04/30/0137225/elon-musk-says-openai-betrayed-him-clashes-with-companys-attorney
[3] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/05/2259238/brockman-rebuts-musks-take-on-startups-history-recounts-secret-work-for-tesla
[4] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/08/0339239/sam-altman-had-a-bad-day-in-court
[5] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/12/0627219/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-testifies-in-openai-trial
[6] https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/elon-musk-loses-lawsuit-against-openai-2026-05-18/
[7] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/04/28/0326240/elon-musk-and-openai-ceo-sam-altman-head-to-court
[8] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/15/0140234/musk-accused-of-selective-amnesia-altman-of-lying-as-openai-trial-nears-end
[9] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/14/0420215/openai-trial-wraps-up-with-jackass-trophy-for-challenging-musk
[10] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/12/2231210/sam-altman-testifies-that-elon-musk-wanted-control-of-openai
[11] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/12/0627219/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-testifies-in-openai-trial
[12] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/08/0339239/sam-altman-had-a-bad-day-in-court
[13] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/07/035251/sam-altmans-management-style-comes-under-the-microscope-at-openai-trial
[14] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/05/2259238/brockman-rebuts-musks-take-on-startups-history-recounts-secret-work-for-tesla
[15] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/04/2247258/openai-president-discloses-his-stake-in-the-company-is-worth-30-billion
[16] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/01/0058258/musk-concludes-testimony-at-openai-trial
[17] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/04/30/0137225/elon-musk-says-openai-betrayed-him-clashes-with-companys-attorney
[18] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/04/29/0311202/musk-testifies-openai-was-created-as-nonprofit-to-counter-google
[19] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/04/28/0326240/elon-musk-and-openai-ceo-sam-altman-head-to-court
Mixed feelings.. (Score:5, Insightful)
On the one hand, love seeing Musk lose, on the other hand, I hate seeing Altman win..
Re:Mixed feelings.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I hate seeing seemingly intelligent people view this as "I hate that business guy more than the other business guy", as opposed to "What rules should American business have to operate under".
Re:Mixed feelings.. (Score:4)
> I hate seeing seemingly intelligent people view this as "I hate that business guy more than the other business guy", as opposed to "What rules should American business have to operate under".
Unfortunately, those rules won't really matter while the guy at the top rigs things in favor of "friends" (meaning sycophants). Yes, Elon lost in court, but he's got two and a half more years and a ton of "flatter the king" money to change things in his favor. Also unfortunately, our current business and political climates are just cults of personality where money gets you everywhere. Those rules are also about to get skewed even more by the $1.7 billion slush fund the IRS is setting up for Trump, for dropping his bogus, and probably illegal, lawsuit against himself, so he can pay people he thinks were wronged under Biden, like the Jan 6th insurrectionists.
Re: (Score:2)
> so he can pay people he thinks were wronged under Biden
I think the word is "claims" - rewarding people who backed him and his "I wuz robbed" at a cost to themselves.
Re: (Score:2)
>> so he can pay people he thinks were wronged under Biden
> I think the word is "claims" - rewarding people who backed him and his "I wuz robbed" at a cost to themselves.
The only relevant difference between thinks and claims is whether or not he [Trump] vocalized his thoughts. And yeah, he does that a lot.
Re: (Score:2)
I hate that they're right to.
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The DOGE rules? If you actually cared about a single rule "American business have to operate under" you would be cheering this decision like everyone else. What we have here is two sociopathic billionaires and a douchebag cheering on one of them. Any "seemingly intelligent" person would hope both lost everything.
Re: (Score:3)
No matter who wins, we all lose.
Wasn't he right though? (Score:3, Interesting)
It does look like his arguement that they stole a non-profit to make a massive business may have really happened. Kind of weird how stealing an entire non-profit worth billions, maybe hundreds of billions of dollars only has a statue of limitations of 2-3 years. That has to be one of the biggest thefts in the history of stealing.
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He was in government for how many years? If he wanted the statute of limitations altered, then surely that would have been the time to do it.
It would seem to me that he didn't care about the statute of limitations until AFTER other people started getting rich and he didn't.
Re: (Score:2)
> He was in government for how many years? If he wanted the statute of limitations altered, then surely that would have been the time to do it.
That probably would have been a really hard sell to Congress, even a Republican-controlled one.
> It would seem to me that he didn't care about the statute of limitations until AFTER other people started getting rich and he didn't.
So sad Elon missed out on getting rich. :-) More seriously, how much more money does Elon need? /s
Re: (Score:2)
> So sad Elon missed out on getting rich. :-) More seriously, how much more money does Elon need? /s
Money buys power. Money buys control. Money buys countries.
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Do you know how laws are made / changed?
Did you miss that episode of Schoolhouse Rock?
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In America, laws are made by paying the politicians under the table. That's common knowledge. It's how the DMCA got passed, for example. But it's also made by having financially valuable information information, particularly that which permits politicians to have insider information that they can sell for votes/influence or use to make a killing on the stock market.
(You notice anything odd about oil price fluctuations recently?)
Musk had access to money, some of the largest databases the USG had, and the abi
Re: (Score:3)
Musk also could have just filed suit within the allowed time, which is the correct way of doing this. It's not like he didn't know about OpenAI's actions; none of this was secret and he clearly knows how to file a lawsuit.
The actual goal here was likely to make OpenAI go through discovery, waste a bunch of money, and get company officers up on the stand to say embarrassing things. Which they absolutely did.
It's not entirely clear to me why Altman didn't have the suit dismissed way back in the day; the statu
Re: (Score:2)
I like how people assume Musk would have won if not for a technicality. The case wasn't even considered by the jury because of failure to file on time. There is no reason to believe it would have faired better if not dismissed for the reason it was.
Musk is a malignant sociopath, doing damage to people is his priority. It's really bad when Peter Thiel says that about you.
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> He was in government for how many years? If he wanted the statute of limitations altered, then surely that would have been the time to do it.
Musk was "in government" for about four months, as part of DoGE. He was busy tearing stuff down, not building anything up.
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He's only pissed that his own attempt to do the exact same thing didn't work, and they did it with Microsoft money instead of his.
All of these guys need to be put through an industrial shredder.
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It was a civil case, there was no issue of "stealing an entire non-profit worth billions". Did you have Grok write that?
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Non-profits "transfer" to for-profits all the time. Churches do: [1]https://www.startchurch.com/bl... [startchurch.com]
[1] https://www.startchurch.com/blog/view/name/new-trend-church-owned-business
Appeal possible? (Score:2)
I was under the impression that an appeal against a not guilty verdict was not permitted in the US, and was only permissible in the UK in the event of murder when overwhelming evidence showed wilful interference of the trial or exceptional new evidence.
Re:Appeal possible? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not a "not guilty" verdict, it's a procedural verdict; the statute of limitations had expired prior to Musk filing suit. (Also, civil trials don't find guilt in the way criminal trials do.) You can appeal that ("the court calculated the dates wrong" I guess?) but generally you will fail because if you could show the court calculated the dates wrong, you would not have gotten tossed in the first place.
The exception would be if you had really strong evidence the court was in the bag for the opposition and was treating you unfairly, but AFAIK there's no evidence of that here.
This said, Musk has absolutely bottomless pools of a) money and b) resentment so God knows he'll probably appeal just to be a dick. I'm not sure if this is a "he will have to pay OpenAI's lawyers and court fees" situation but even if he does, it's still probably more annoyance than the money is worth.
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This is a civil trial, not a criminal trial. There is no "jeopardy" there is no double jeopardy. This is a civil suit.
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This is a civil suit. There is no "guilty" or "not guilty" here. Only liable / not liable, and that can be appealed by either party to the circuit court, and the supreme court.
Technicality (Score:5, Interesting)
The case was won on a technicality. The core issue was never really addressed.
Re: (Score:2)
There was no core issue.
What a waste of time (Score:4, Interesting)
From the article:
> In a unanimous verdict, the jury in Oakland, California, federal court said Musk had brought his case too late. The jury deliberated less than two hours.
Eleven days of testimony to discover the statute of limitations had expired, which should have been trivial to calculate? And, as far as I can tell, the judge warned them about well in advance? My God. What a colossal waste of everyone's time. I hope court fees were hefty indeed.
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Saw this too. A bit confused the judge let it go to trial. I forget what it is called, but I thought judges ruled on simple matters like this. And agreed. an absolute colossal waste for the legal system which is already under duress. Imagine how many people are sitting in jail waiting their turn for time in court with billionaires sucking all the oxygen out of the system. Musk should pay dearly for this, like a million dollars for each minute of court time that was wasted and the payout to fund lawyers for
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It is called summary judgement, and I honestly thought that was good news that it went to trial, and the court could find justification to stop business in America from being allowed to steal non-profits. I guess I was wrong. This will only make things worse in the long run.
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The court bypassed the "justification to stop business in America from being allowed to steal non-profits" question, finding that Musk should have thought of that earlier. I guess he was otherwise engaged at the time, was that when he was taking Twitter over and gutting it?
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"...the court could find justification to stop business in America from being allowed to steal non-profits..."
That was not even an option in this case. The result you hoped for was for Musk to win an enormous amount of money and possibly control over OpenAI, which you would then happily see as a for-profit corporation.
"I guess I was wrong."
That's not surprising, nor is your incessant dishonesty.
Ha Ha (Score:2)
Eat shit Elon.
Honest question... (Score:3)
Anyone with legal experience answer, I'm curious how a question of statute of limitations went to the jury. Is that not a decision of law? And if that was a major factor, how was that not decided first? A full trial wasn't needed to decide whether or not there was even grounds to sue.
Re: (Score:2)
The jury was advisory anyway, the actual decision will be made the the judge (who agreed, as she said she was likely to do beforehand).
Punishment (Score:2)
Since this trial centered around capital, the jury should have issued the death penalty for everyone since that is capital punishment. Just kidding. Lol. :)
And the winners are... (Score:3)
Lawyers.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, and in this case, Sam Altman and Elon Musk got a lot of publicity. And at that level, any publicity is good publicity.
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Ironically, aside from the jury, they seem to be the least sleazy people involved in this particular case. I know that's not saying much at all.
Too bad (Score:1)
It’s a pity they can’t both lose.
Does this mean Denmark gets to keep Greenland? (Score:2)
I've missed several episodes of this soapy, so completely lost track.
LOL!!! (Score:1, Troll)
If he's so smart... why can't he win a simple lawsuit? Too much ketamine?
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Don't worry, daddy Trump will make it right.
Re:LOL!!! (Score:4, Informative)
Too bad they couldn't both lose. OTOH, Musk is as big a liar as Altman, so neither of their testimonies should be believed. Which make it hard to come to a just decision.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Why does this have to be an ad hominem attack? Honestly I think the right thing to have done is to revert OpenAI back into a pure non-profit, with a proper governance board. Hating Elon might be fun, but it's blinding to what we all just cheered: The ability for business people to start non-profits and pivot once the non-profit advantages have borne fruit. Non-profits get special pricing for most of the services they use, purchase hardware at discounts, get tax deductible donations from their "founders", an
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> Non-profits get special pricing for most of the services they use, purchase hardware at discounts, get tax deductible donations from their "founders", and make a healthy business, and decide at the 11th hour to convert to profit, and pillage all the coffers in stock buybacks and distributions. This is not wise.
I dunno, in the age of the grift, it seems pretty wise. Whatever leads to the greatest possible profit potential must be the right thing to do. After all, Greed is our only God, and profit is our only moral compass. And look, it's paying off. Where's the "not wise" part of it?
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"I think the right thing to have done is to revert OpenAI back into a pure non-profit..."
Of course you do.
"The ability for business people to start non-profits and pivot once the non-profit advantages have borne fruit."
Was precisely Elon Musk's plan. The non-profit status would make it more cost effective for him to seize control and exploit rapid increase in valuation.
"Non-profits get special pricing for most of the services they use, purchase hardware at discounts, get tax deductible donations from their