Jury Delivers Win for Sam Altman and OpenAI in Fight with Elon Musk

A jury has handed a decisive victory to Sam Altman and OpenAI, bringing to a close a long and bitter legal battle that set the world’s richest person against one of the most powerful figures in the artificial intelligence boom.

The case had become more than a dispute over contracts and corporate structure. It was a public reckoning over OpenAI’s origins, its transformation into one of the most valuable companies in technology, and the fractured relationship between Elon Musk and the organisation he helped launch. For weeks, the courtroom in Oakland, California, offered a rare look inside the early ambitions, private tensions and competing narratives that have shaped the AI industry’s most closely watched company.

The federal jury in Oakland found Altman, OpenAI and its president, Greg Brockman, not liable over Musk’s allegations that they unjustly enriched themselves and violated a founding contract made with Musk when the startup was created.

The verdict, reached after less than two hours of deliberation, is a sharp rejection of Musk and his lawyers’ argument that Altman “stole a charity” through his stewardship of OpenAI. It also gives the AI company a clearer route to pursue a public listing later this year at a valuation of about $1tn.

The jury’s decision is a non-binding, advisory verdict, leaving Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers with final authority to issue her own ruling in the case. Gonzalez Rogers immediately indicated that she would accept the jury’s finding and dismissed Musk’s claims.

“I think there’s a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury’s finding, which is why I was prepared to dismiss on the spot,” Gonzalez Rogers told Musk’s lawyer after the verdict.

The jury concluded that Musk’s lawsuit, filed in 2024, fell outside the statute of limitations. A central legal issue during the trial was whether the alleged harms Musk cited — including his breach of charitable trust claim — occurred before certain key dates. OpenAI argued that Musk had known of the company’s plans to pursue a for-profit structure as early as 2017, meaning his lawsuit was brought beyond the three-year limit.

That finding proved pivotal. Rather than accepting Musk’s framing of the case as a moral battle over the fate of a public-interest AI lab, the jury appeared persuaded by OpenAI’s timeline argument: that Musk had long been aware of the direction the company was taking and had waited too long to challenge it in court.

The scene at the courthouse

After the verdict was read, lawyers began packing up boxes and the courtroom quickly cleared. The end came with striking speed, especially after a trial that had placed some of Silicon Valley’s most recognisable figures under sustained scrutiny.

Gonzalez Rogers gave each juror a small pocket constitution, which she signed, dated and inscribed with the words: “Thank you for your service”.

Speaking at a press conference outside the courthouse, OpenAI’s lead attorney, William Savitt, said the jury had considered hundreds of pieces of evidence and heard weeks of testimony before deciding that Musk’s case was a “hypocritical attempt to sabotage a competitor”.

“Mr Musk can tell his stories,” Savitt said. “What the jury found today is just that: Stories, not facts.” He added that the verdict was “not a technical decision; it’s a substantive one”.

Musk’s lawyers, Steven Molo and Marc Toberoff, framed the trial as having proved a point and exposed OpenAI, despite their defeat. Molo said the testimony was “valuable for the world to see” and described the jury’s decision as a “technical” one.

Their response reflected the broader strategy Musk’s team had pursued throughout the case: presenting the lawsuit not simply as a legal claim, but as a challenge to what Musk portrayed as a betrayal of OpenAI’s founding ideals. Even in defeat, his attorneys sought to position the trial as a forum that had forced internal details about OpenAI into public view.

Musk tweeted that he would appeal the verdict.

“Regarding the OpenAI case, the judge & jury never actually ruled on the merits of the case, just on a calendar technicality. There is no question to anyone following the case in detail that Altman & Brockman did in fact enrich themselves by stealing a charity. The only question is WHEN they did it! I will be filing an appeal with the Ninth Circuit, because creating a precedent to loot charities is incredibly destructive to charitable giving in America,” he wrote.

Musk, Altman and Brockman were not in court when the verdict was delivered.

The nine-person jury in Oakland began deliberations on Monday morning after a three-week trial that featured testimony from some of Silicon Valley’s best-known executives. Musk, Altman, Brockman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella all testified, at times facing aggressive cross-examinations in the courtroom.

Microsoft, which Musk had accused in his lawsuit of aiding and abetting Altman, was also found not liable by the jury.

“The facts and the timeline in this case have long been clear, and we welcome the jury’s decision to dismiss these claims as untimely,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement.

A clash between two tech titans

The verdict concludes one of the most closely followed trials in the technology industry, offering a rare glimpse into OpenAI’s turbulent history and the rift between two of the sector’s biggest figures. While the outcome is a victory for Altman, the case brought to light numerous unflattering episodes and details involving both men.

Musk’s lawsuit sought to have $134bn redistributed from OpenAI’s for-profit arm to its non-profit organisation. It also called for Altman and Brockman to be removed from their positions at OpenAI, and for the company’s for-profit restructuring to be reversed.

At the heart of the dispute were Musk’s claims that Altman, Brockman and OpenAI had violated a founding agreement when they restructured the company into a for-profit entity. Musk accused the defendants of breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment, arguing that Altman persuaded him to co-found OpenAI in 2015 as a non-profit dedicated to benefiting humanity, before later reshaping it for personal gain.

OpenAI denied all of Musk’s allegations and said he had always been aware of plans to establish a for-profit entity. Lawyers for the company argued that Musk was motivated by jealousy after an unsuccessful attempt to take control of OpenAI in 2018, after which he left the organisation. OpenAI has also repeatedly said that it remains overseen by its non-profit organisation and committed to what it calls “the mission” of using its technology to help the world.

The trial featured testimony from numerous current and former OpenAI executives, alongside academic experts in non-profit law and corporate governance. Lawyers for both sides presented extensive private texts, emails and internal documents in an effort to shape the story of the company’s founding and establish when the parties became aware of OpenAI’s for-profit ambitions.

Those documents became central to both sides’ accounts. For Musk’s lawyers, they were evidence of a company drifting away from its founding purpose. For OpenAI, they helped build the argument that Musk was not blindsided by the move toward a commercial structure, but had been part of discussions about how the lab could raise the vast sums needed to compete in cutting-edge AI development.

The case also highlighted the enormous stakes surrounding artificial intelligence. OpenAI’s rise has transformed it from a research lab into a defining company of the current technology era, while Musk has built his own AI venture in direct competition with it. That commercial rivalry gave the trial a sharper edge, with OpenAI repeatedly portraying Musk’s claims as an attempt to damage a competitor rather than restore a charitable mission.

What the verdict means for OpenAI

For Altman and OpenAI, the verdict removes a major legal cloud at a crucial moment. The company has been seeking to cement its position at the centre of the AI economy, strengthen its relationship with investors and partners, and prepare for a possible public listing at a valuation that would place it among the most valuable technology companies in the world.

The finding also bolsters OpenAI’s argument that its unusual structure — a non-profit parent overseeing a capped-profit business — remains legally defensible, despite years of criticism from Musk and other sceptics. While the trial exposed internal tensions and raised difficult questions about how public-interest AI research should be funded, the jury’s decision gives OpenAI a significant legal and reputational reprieve.

For Musk, the defeat is unlikely to end the dispute. His pledge to appeal suggests the fight will continue, and his public comments after the verdict show that he intends to keep pressing his argument that OpenAI abandoned its founding purpose.

Still, the result is a setback. The jury did not accept his claims of liability, and the judge moved quickly to dismiss them. In practical terms, OpenAI emerges from the trial with its leadership intact, its restructuring plans undisturbed and its path toward a potential public offering left open.

Although the jury decided the question of liability, Gonzalez Rogers would have been responsible for determining what remedies OpenAI might have faced if Musk had prevailed. The remedies phase of the case, which began on Monday, was cancelled following the verdict.

For now, the courtroom drama has ended with Altman and OpenAI firmly ahead. But the larger fight over who controls the future of artificial intelligence — and whether companies building the world’s most powerful systems can remain faithful to their founding promises — is far from over.