{"id":1517356,"date":"2026-05-18T15:23:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T20:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?guid=4e41c6f01a4082cdf1a9b42a7dfde47f"},"modified":"2026-06-23T07:08:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T12:08:31","slug":"court-dismisses-elon-musks-case-against-sam-altman-and-openai__trashed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=1517356","title":{"rendered":"Court dismisses Elon Musk’s case against Sam Altman and OpenAI"},"content":{"rendered":"
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman arrives to court at the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building on May 12, 2026 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Benjamin Fanjoy\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>

(NEW YORK) -- A jury on Monday found that Elon Musk waited too long to bring claims accusing OpenAI, under Sam Altman\u2019s leadership, of abandoning its public-benefit mission as it moved toward a for-profit structure.<\/p>

The nine-person advisory jury determined that the claims against OpenAI and Altman were barred due to the statute of limitations. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers accepted the determination and dismissed the claims.<\/p>

The three-week trial at a federal courthouse in Oakland, California, featured testimony from Musk and Altman, as well as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.<\/p>

When Musk sued OpenAI and Altman two years ago, he claimed that the company abandoned its mission of benefiting humanity.<\/p>

Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI, said he reached an agreement with the company's leaders on the nonprofit course of the firm when it launched in 2015.<\/p>

Musk accused the company of later breaching agreement when it made ChatGPT-4 available for use by Microsoft -- meaning the tech giant got access to the then-most powerful version of its popular chatbot under an exclusive licensing agreement. Microsoft and OpenAI have renegotiated the exclusive licensing agreement, allowing OpenAI to strike deals with other tech firms.<\/p>

OpenAI rebuked the charges, calling them \"baseless.\" Microsoft also denied any wrongdoing. Musk, the world's richest person, counts $803 billion in wealth, according to Forbes. He was seeking $150 billion in damages from the tech companies, as well as the removal of Altman from OpenAI's board of directors.<\/p>

Musk also sought a legal order that requires OpenAI to abide by its alleged founding mission of aiding humanity and retaining its nonprofit form<\/p>

OpenAI, which is not publicly traded, valued itself at $852 billion after a round of funding in March. Microsoft's value -- as measured by market capitalization -- stands at about $3.1 trillion.<\/p>

Musk pleaded two claims against OpenAI: unjust enrichment and breach of charitable trust.<\/p>

Lawyers for Altman argued that Musk was motivated by a pursuit of control over OpenAI, rather than an effort to safeguard its non-profit status. In fact, Musk sought to fold OpenAI into Tesla -- a move that would have absorbed the venture into a for-profit entity, lawyers for Altman said in a legal filing.<\/p>

In 2018, Musk told a former OpenAI employee that financial support from Tesla would help OpenAI compete with tech giant Google, the filing said.<\/p>

\"Tesla [was] the only path that could even hope to hold a candle to Google,\" Musk said, according to the legal filing.<\/p>

For his part, Musk said in the lawsuit that the agreement on OpenAI's non-profit status was memorialized in a legal filing when OpenAI was incorporated.<\/p>

In the lawsuit, Musk alleged that Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman reaffirmed the founding agreement in written messages over the ensuing years.<\/p>

\"[I] remain enthusiastic about the non-profit structure!\" Altman wrote to Musk in 2017, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>

Musk, who helped bankroll OpenAI, launched a rival for-profit AI company in 2023 called xAI, which built a chatbot that competes with ChatGPT.<\/p>

Acknowledging his previous criticism of the pace and ambitions of AI development, Musk said in a conference call on X in July 2023 that he entered the industry reluctantly.<\/p>

Copyright \u00a9 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman arrives to court at the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building on May 12, 2026 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Benjamin Fanjoy\/Getty Images)(NEW YORK) — A jury on Monday found that Elon Musk waited too long to bring claims accusin…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2130,"featured_media":1507921,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2026\/05\/18e8c5b8a2678da668dcf27d7f0c1303.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1450,1502],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1517356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abc-business-news","category-abc-heads"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-25 19:50:47","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2026\/05\/18e8c5b8a2678da668dcf27d7f0c1303.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1517356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2130"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1517356"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1517356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1517606,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1517356\/revisions\/1517606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1507921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1517356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1517356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1517356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}