Breaking: Jury Rules Against Elon Musk In OpenAI Lawsuit
A federal jury in Oakland, California, delivered a major legal setback to Elon Musk on Monday, rejecting his lawsuit against OpenAI after he accused the artificial intelligence company’s leadership of abandoning its original nonprofit mission and effectively “stealing a charity” through its move toward a for-profit structure.
Musk, who helped co-found OpenAI in 2015, had sought sweeping remedies through the case. According to The Wall Street Journal, he pushed for the removal of CEO Sam Altman and company president Greg Brockman from their leadership positions.
The lawsuit also demanded an “unwinding of the company’s recent conversion to a more traditional governance structure and damages worth more than $180 billion to be paid into an OpenAI foundation,” the outlet reported.
But the jury ultimately found that Musk’s claims were barred by the statute of limitations, bringing the case to a close without granting the billionaire the dramatic overhaul he had pursued.
Fox Business reported that Musk left OpenAI in 2018 after failing to convince the company’s leadership to merge with Tesla. OpenAI is widely known as the company behind ChatGPT.
“In his lawsuit, Musk accused OpenAI of violating its founding mission as a nonprofit to develop AI for the benefit of humanity when the startup created a for-profit entity in 2019,” Fox Business said
A jury rejected Elon Musk’s claims that OpenAI under Sam Altman’s leadership betrayed its mission to benefit the public by morphing into a for-profit business, finding that he waited too long to bring his claims against the company pic.twitter.com/LuLUljsOPa
— PiQ (@PiQSuite) May 18, 2026
The courtroom fight highlighted the increasingly bitter rivalry between Musk and OpenAI’s current leadership, as artificial intelligence becomes one of the most consequential economic, cultural, and national-security battlegrounds of the modern era.
During closing arguments Thursday, Musk’s attorney, Steven Molo, took aim at Altman’s credibility.
“Five witnesses in this trial called him a liar under oath,” Molo said, according to The Wall Street Journal.
OpenAI attorney William Savitt fired back by framing the lawsuit as a substitute for competition in the marketplace.
“To succeed in AI, it turns out, all Mr. Musk can do is come to court,” Savitt said.
The Journal also reported that Musk is “racing to hold a public offering for SpaceX, his rocket company, which merged with his struggling AI startup.”
Musk’s xAI operates Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot integrated into the X social media platform.
Meanwhile, OpenAI is reportedly pursuing its own public listing as competition in the AI sector intensifies. The Journal noted that “OpenAI is also seeking a public listing and is trying to regain momentum as rival Anthropic has emerged as a presumptive front-runner.”
The ruling marks another high-profile chapter in the fight over who controls the future of artificial intelligence. For conservatives, the case also raises broader questions about corporate accountability, nonprofit transparency, and whether powerful tech institutions can be trusted when their founding promises give way to multibillion-dollar ambitions.