A California jury on Monday rejected Elon Musk’s $150 billion lawsuit against OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman, and co-founder Greg Brockman, removing one of the most significant legal threats to the company behind ChatGPT. The decision marks the culmination of a three-week trial that aired years of internal conflict between the co-founders of the once-nonprofit AI research lab.
Jurors found that Musk waited too long to bring his claims, which accused Altman and Brockman of breaching a charitable trust by shifting OpenAI toward a for-profit structure. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and donated roughly $38 million, had argued that the organization abandoned its founding mission to serve as a counterweight to Google’s AI dominance.
During the trial, Musk testified that he contributed the idea, name, and initial funding, and that he recruited key talent like chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. However, internal emails from 2017 revealed that Altman and other co-founders resisted Musk’s demand to take up to 90% equity in any future for-profit entity and his proposal to merge OpenAI into Tesla. Musk walked away from the board in 2018.
The defense highlighted questions about Altman’s motivations, including whether his political ambitions — he considered running for California governor — took precedence over AI development. Altman acknowledged meeting with over 100 members of Congress and confirmed OpenAI is working with Democratic insiders ahead of a potential IPO. Musk’s lawyer accused Altman of a “fixation” on the CEO title and argued the lawsuit was about accountability, not vengeance.
With the verdict, OpenAI clears a major hurdle as it races toward an IPO, while Musk’s own AI venture, xAI, recently merged with SpaceX and is now valued at $1.25 trillion. The outcome is being watched closely as both companies prepare for public markets.
