MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Musk loses USD 150 billion lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman

The decision clears the way for OpenAI's stock market debut, an operation expected to rank among the largest in financial market history, with a valuation close to one trillion dollars

A federal jury in Oakland, California, on Monday unanimously rejected the lawsuit that magnate Elon Musk had filed against OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and the company's president, Greg Brockman, in which he sought USD 150 billion in damages and the reversal of the artificial intelligence firm's transformation into a for-profit entity. The verdict, reached by all nine jurors, found that the lawsuit is barred by the statute of limitations and amounts to a sharp setback for the founder of Tesla, who has already announced his intention to appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The proceedings, held over three weeks with eleven sessions of testimony, exposed the deep animosity between the two technology magnates, who accused each other of manipulation and bad faith. Musk's lawyers argued that Altman and Brockman “robbed a charitable organization” when they redirected the original mission of OpenAI, founded in 2015 as a nonprofit research laboratory dedicated to developing artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity. OpenAI's defense, by contrast, portrayed Musk as an investor who left the board in 2018 after failing to obtain full control of the company and who later founded a rival firm, xAI, in 2023. Federal Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said there was “a substantial amount of evidence” backing the verdict and that she was prepared to dismiss the case outright.

“The judge and the jury never really ruled on the merits of the case, only on a calendar technicality,” Musk said on his X social media platform after the ruling was announced. The businessman argued that the decision sets “a destructive precedent” for charitable donations in the United States. The lawsuit against Microsoft, a long-standing OpenAI shareholder accused by Musk of complicity, was dismissed in the same ruling.

The decision clears the way for OpenAI's stock market debut, an operation expected to rank among the largest in financial market history, with a valuation close to one trillion dollars. The company, which in recent months has renegotiated its agreement with Microsoft and obtained regulatory approval to transform into a for-profit firm, also faces growing competition from Anthropic, a company founded by former OpenAI engineers with a differentiated public stance on artificial intelligence safety.

Musk, for his part, has just returned from President Donald Trump's trip to China, where he formed part of the US business delegation. The magnate is finalizing the IPO of SpaceX, his rocket and satellite subsidiary, with which he hopes to raise USD 80 billion in what would be the largest stock market debut in history.