The advisory jury found Altman, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, and Microsoft not liable, with the court agreeing with the determination
JOSH EDELSON / Getty Images
Sam Altman, OpenAI, and Microsoft $MSFT were cleared of all claims brought by Elon Musk in a lawsuit alleging that OpenAI's leadership betrayed the company's founding charitable mission. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers subsequently endorsed the advisory jury's conclusion that Altman, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, and Microsoft bore no liability.
According to Business Insider, the statute of limitations was the decisive factor: jurors determined that Musk had waited too long to bring his allegations, barring relief against all four defendants. Reaching the verdict required sitting through a three-week trial whose witness list ran from Altman and Brockman to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Musk.
Musk's core allegation held that Altman and Brockman had betrayed the organization's founding purpose — advancing artificial intelligence for humanity's benefit — by erecting a for-profit structure and forging a partnership with Microsoft. From the witness stand, Musk said his roughly $38 million in donations were made with the expectation that OpenAI would serve humanity broadly rather than line anyone's pockets. Among the remedies Musk's attorneys pursued were disgorgement of up to $134 billion, the ouster of Altman and Brockman, and a rollback of the 2025 restructuring through which OpenAI enlarged its commercial operations.
OpenAI's defense team pushed back on each point, arguing that no strings had ever been attached to Musk's contributions, that competing with Google $GOOGL DeepMind made a commercial structure unavoidable, and that evidence showed Musk had himself proposed going for-profit — provided he wound up in charge. In their telling, the litigation amounted to a competitive weapon Musk deployed once his bid to run OpenAI fell through. xAI, the AI laboratory Musk founded in 2023, has since been absorbed into his rocket company SpaceX.
The trial featured pointed testimony from both principals. According to Altman's testimony, Musk insisted on holding a controlling position in any commercialized version of the organization and, when asked what would become of that control after his death, suggested it pass to his children. Musk's legal team attacked Altman's credibility on cross-examination, drawing on statements from former executives and board members who had accused him of being dishonest with them. Those allegations had real consequences: the board ousted Altman from the CEO role in 2023, though he was quickly reinstated.
Musk testified that the moment he concluded OpenAI had strayed from its mission was when Microsoft prepared to invest $10 billion in the company in 2023. On the stand, Musk said the Microsoft deal — a $10 billion investment that closed in 2023 — was the event that crystallized his belief that OpenAI had drifted from its founding principles. "I was concerned they were really trying to steal the charity," he said from the stand. Nadella, for his part, told the court that at no point had Musk reached out to him with objections to the terms under which Microsoft put money into OpenAI.
The verdict arrives as both Altman and Musk are steering their respective companies toward public markets. A fundraising round that closed in late March gave OpenAI $122 billion in new capital and placed its valuation above $850 billion. SpaceX — carrying a $1.25 trillion combined valuation after its February merger with xAI — submitted a confidential IPO filing in April, and CNBC reported that the prospectus could become public as early as this week.
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