Jury tosses Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman
May 18, 2026
A jury on Monday found that tech billionaire Elon Musk waited too long to bring his lawsuit against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, throwing out the suit that claimed Altman had unlawfully enriched himself from the organization they helped to create.
The jury found Altman, co-founder Greg Brockman and Ope
nAI not liable on all claims after a blockbuster three-week trial that has captured the attention of the tech industry and that threatened to reshape the race to develop artificial intelligence.
On the same statute-of-limitations grounds, the jury also rejected Musk’s claim that Microsoft aided and abetted Altman and Brockman in allegedly breaching their duty to OpenAI. Microsoft was an early and large investor in OpenAI’s for-profit operation.
The question of whether Musk dragged his feet before suing was a primary topic of questions when Musk was on the witness stand for three days.
The statute of limitations were strict in the case: three years for a claim that Altman and Brockman breached a duty of charitable trust that they owed to OpenAI as a nonprofit organization, and two years for a claim that they unlawfully enriched themselves from the organization.
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OpenAI co-founders including Musk, Altman and Brockman discussed a for-profit conversion as early 2017, and OpenAI created a for-profit arm initially in 2019. Musk sued in 2024.
Musk said during the trial that he waited to sue because he believed reassurances from Altman over the years. He said he finally became fed up in 2023 after Microsoft invested $10 billion in OpenAI’s for-profit arm in exchange for intellectual property rights and a share of future profits.
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