Elon Musk loses case over OpenAI’s future

 Elon Musk loses case over OpenAI’s future

Morning Brew Inc, Photos: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto, YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

Yesterday was the biggest win for Team ChatGPT since a clueless professor neglected to run final papers through an AI detector. In a snap conclusion to a three-week trial, the jury tossed Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, that asserted Altman “stole a charity” by converting OpenAI from a nonprofit lab to a for-profit entity. The jury decided that Musk had missed the three-year statute of limitations to file the case since OpenAI became for-profit in 2019, and Musk sued in 2024. The judge accepted the jury’s finding and immediately dismissed the case. In a post on X, Musk vowed to appeal, calling the decision a “calendar technicality.” Meanwhile, an attorney for OpenAI told reporters outside the courthouse, “It’s not a technical decision, it’s a substantive one.” Dirty laundry Musk, who helped found OpenAI, claimed he was swindled out of his $38 million early investment in OpenAI because his co-founders later shed its nonprofit status and enriched themselves as its valuation ballooned. The suit also named OpenAI’s biggest corporate backer, Microsoft, as a co-defendant. Altman’s defense argued that Musk wasn’t deceived, since he was part of discussions about converting OpenAI into a for-profit entity in 2017, shortly before he left the lab because his bid to get “total control” of it failed. The defense claimed Musk went to court only after founding his own competing AI startup, xAI. While the verdict was a decisive win for Altman, revelations from the trial made both sides blush: OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever told the company’s board Altman “exhibits a consistent pattern of lying,” according to his testimony to the court. Musk obtained the secret diary of OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, in which Brockman wrote that Altman gave him an equity stake in his family office behind Musk’s back—which Musk suspected was a way to buy loyalty. Altman testified that Musk proposed folding OpenAI into Tesla and separately floated passing control of it to his children. Former OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis, who testified in the case, is the mother of four of Musk’s children and was accused by OpenAI of passing information to him. They’ll soon compete on Wall St…with OpenAI reportedly prepping to IPO by 2027, while Musk’s xAI is set to go public as part of the massive SpaceX IPO planned for as early as next month.