As its name suggests, OpenAI is ostensibly a company that develops AI for the benefit of everyone. However Musk challenged this idea when he first filed his lawsuit against the company on August 2024
According to the case summary by the Northern District of California, Elon Musk claimed that Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and other OpenAI-related entities deceived him into helping found and fund OpenAI starting in 2015 as a nonprofit organization which then turned into a profit-driven structure. Musk gave $38 million to OpenAI before he left the organization’s board in 2018.
Musk sued for $150 billion in damages. In addition, Musk accused Microsoft of helping OpenAI shift to a for-profit company. Between 2019 and 2023, Microsoft had invested over $13 billion in OpenAI.
The defendants say that OpenAI only switched to a for-profit structure after they decided that profits would be the only way to get enough money to develop their AI models.
The defendants argue that Musk’s lawsuit was filed out of greed, claiming that Musk only left OpenAI after failing to convince the others to run the organization his way. They assert that it was only after OpenAI switched to a for-profit structure and became successful that Musk decided to return and sue them. Furthermore, they claimed that Elon filed his lawsuit too late.
On May 18, the advisory jury, in under 2 hours, unanimously decided that his 3-year statute of limitations had expired. The judge agreed to this decision. In other words, the judge agreed that Musk waited too long to file his lawsuit. Prior to this verdict, the defendants had argued that Elon Musk already knew the organization’s plans years earlier.
While the jury decided that Musk filed too late, his case did not actually decide whether or not OpenAI intentionally misled him into helping fund the company.
Unsatisfied with the results, Musk plans on filing an appeal.
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