Elon Musk is taking his high-profile battle against OpenAI to the U.S. Court of Appeals after a California jury dismissed his lawsuit on what he described as a calendar technicality.
Musk launched the legal challenge in 2024 to hold OpenAI executives accountable for abandoning their founding promise to develop artificial intelligence for the public good rather than personal profit.
The federal jury in Oakland took less than two hours to determine that Musk’s claims fell outside a three-year statute of limitations. Because the case was dismissed purely on this timing issue, the court never actually ruled on whether OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman breached the public trust.
Musk spoke out immediately after the decision, asserting that the timeline does not change the core facts of how the company transformed from a charity into a massive commercial operation.
“There is no question to anyone following the case in detail that Altman & Brockman did in fact enrich themselves by stealing a charity,” Musk wrote on X. “The only question is WHEN they did it!”
Musk’s legal team emphasized that the lawsuit was never about personal financial gain for the billionaire. Musk, who donated roughly $38 million to kickstart the venture in 2015, asked the court to strip Altman and Brockman of their leadership roles and force the company to return billions in “ill-gotten gains” directly back to the original OpenAI charity.
During the trial, Musk testified that his substantial early funding was entirely based on the clear understanding that OpenAI would remain a transparent, non-profit lab focused on benefiting humanity. His lawyers argued that the organization only survived its early years because of Musk’s financial backing and star power, before it pivoted to secure a lucrative partnership with Microsoft.
The verdict arrives at a moment of soaring momentum for Musk’s broader ventures. His own artificial intelligence company, xAI, successfully merged with SpaceX earlier this year, pushing the rocket company’s overall valuation to $1.25 trillion. SpaceX is currently preparing for a highly anticipated initial public offering, with its financial prospectus expected to go public as early as this week.
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