Jury rejects Elon Musk’s lawsuit, sides with OpenAI in bitter feud over AI future
A federal grand jury sided with OpenAI and its top executives on Monday, accusing them of betraying a shared vision to guide the development of artificial intelligence as a nonprofit organization with Elon Musk.
The nine-person jury unanimously found that Musk waited too long to sue and missed the statute of limitations.
Musk, the richest man in the world, was the co-founder of OpenAI, a company founded in 2015 that created ChatGPT. After investing $38 million in its early years, Musk blamed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and his best assistant, who goes into money-making mode behind his back.
The jury acted as an advisor, but Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on Monday accepted the verdict as the court’s own decision and rejected Musk’s claims.
The hearing, which began April 27 in Oakland, shed light on the bitter dispute between two Silicon Valley giants and the origins of OpenAI, now valued at $852 billion and poised for one of the largest IPOs in history.
The high-profile, high-stakes showdown between two of the most powerful companies and technology leaders has been billed as a battle that could change the course of artificial intelligence.
Two weeks of testimony from dueling entrepreneurs and other key players in OpenAI’s history provided a rare inside look at the company as it grew from a startup to one of the world’s most influential companies.
Musk had a falling out with his fellow co-founders, and after OpenAI became arguably the most important company in the artificial intelligence field, he decided he was unhappy with how the pioneering company was being run after he left.
Musk claimed that Altman, the startup’s CEO, and OpenAI President Greg Brockman “stole a charity” by using his early support for an altruistic research project so they could get rich by later turning into a run-of-the-mill for-profit company.
OpenAI and its leaders said Musk sued them to gain a competitive advantage for his own startup, xAI.
Musk was seeking the ouster of Altman and Brockman, as well as more than $100 billion in damages to be given to OpenAI’s nonprofit arm instead.
The lawsuit was seen as an existential threat to OpenAI. If the decision had gone the other way, it could have caused a shakeup that would destabilize the company, which is trying to ensure that the United States takes the lead in artificial intelligence and is preparing to go public with a valuation approaching $1 trillion.
The Associated Press and Bloomberg contributed to this article.
