Elon Musk loses lawsuit against OpenAI: Jury rules he waited too long to bring it

A federal jury ruled Monday that Elon Musk waited too long to file his lawsuit against OpenAI, handing a major victory to Sam Altman and the rest of the company.

After a three-week trial in Oakland federal court, the jury concluded that Musk's claims were time-barred by the statute of limitations, so they didn't even get to evaluate the substantive arguments in the case.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who had asked the jury to advise her on the matter, accepted and confirmed their decision.

"The finding of the jury confirms that this lawsuit was a hypocritical attempt to sabotage a competitor and to overcome a long history of very bad predictions about what OpenAI has been and will become," OpenAI attorney William Savitt said outside the courthouse after the decision.

Musk accused OpenAI of betraying its original mission for profit

The owner of xAI and Tesla accused OpenAI and its founders of betraying the original spirit of the organization. Musk contended that the company went from being a nonprofit laboratory dedicated to the benefit of humanity to a commercial enterprise valued at $850 billion, driven by profit and with strong ties to Microsoft.

In addition, Musk alleged that his $38 million given in the early days was misused to fund this business transformation. 

Had he won the case, Musk sought to force OpenAI to return to its nonprofit structure. That move would have derailed the company's IPO and complicated the billion-dollar investments made by Microsoft, Amazon and SoftBank, who have poured billions into the company amid the global AI race.