Jury Tosses Musk's OpenAI Lawsuit in Under Two Hours — Filed Too Late

A federal jury in Oakland, California, took less than two hours on Monday, May 18, 2026, to throw out every single claim in Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Greg Brockman.

Nine jurors. Unanimous. Gone.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers immediately agreed with the advisory jury and dismissed the case. "There's a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury's finding," she said — adding she was prepared to dismiss it "on the spot."

Musk had been seeking up to $150 billion in damages, Altman's ouster from OpenAI's board, and a forced reversal of the company's shift from nonprofit to for-profit structure, according to Variety.

The Statute of Limitations Defense

The jury ruled that Musk waited too long to sue.

According to TechCrunch, OpenAI's statute of limitations defense argued that any harms Musk suffered occurred before specific cutoff dates — before August 5, 2021, for the breach of charitable trust claim, and before August 5, 2022, for the unjust enrichment claim.

The jury bought it. Evidence presented at trial showed Musk was involved in discussions about a for-profit structure as early as 2017, per NBC News. He left the board in February 2018.

He didn't file suit until 2024. That's six years after he walked out the door.

The three-year clock had run out. Case dismissed.

Musk's Response

Musk took to X immediately after the verdict.

"The judge & jury never actually ruled on the merits of the case, just on a calendar technicality," he wrote. "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!"

He announced he'll appeal to the Ninth Circuit.

His lawyer Marc Toberoff told CNBC outside the courthouse: "This case, at its core, is about preserving charities from this kind of exploitation. If they get away with it, they shouldn't."

Lawyer Steven Molo told reporters he believed Musk's side had proved the substance of the case and that the loss was a "technical" one on narrow legal grounds, according to NBC News.

OpenAI's Defense

OpenAI's lead attorney William Savitt was direct. He told reporters outside the courthouse the verdict was "not a technical decision — it's a substantive one," according to The Guardian.

"Mr. Musk can tell his stories. What the jury found today is just that: stories, not facts."

Savitt also called the lawsuit "a hypocritical attempt to sabotage a competitor" — echoing a line TechCrunch also attributed to him post-verdict.

Microsoft, which Musk had accused of aiding and abetting the breach of charitable trust, issued a statement: "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."

What Wasn't Decided

The jury never ruled on whether Altman actually did what Musk accused him of. They ruled Musk filed late. Those are two different things.

Musk's core claim — that OpenAI was built as a nonprofit using donor money and then quietly converted into a for-profit vehicle that made Altman and Brockman personally wealthy — was never adjudicated. The public still doesn't have a definitive legal answer on whether a charity got looted.

According to Rolling Stone, Musk's antitrust claims against OpenAI and Microsoft may still head to a separate trial. The judge was set to discuss that with both sides the same day.

The BBC noted this verdict "adds to a string of recent losses and settlements for Musk in court." Musk's legal team appears to have made a serious strategic error by waiting years to file.

The Unresolved Question

Musk donated $38 million to OpenAI in its early years, according to BBC News. He believed he was funding a nonprofit for humanity's benefit.

OpenAI is now reportedly heading toward an IPO at roughly $1 trillion valuation, per The Guardian. The people running it stand to become incomprehensibly wealthy.

Whether that's legal is now an unanswered question. The jury didn't say it was fine. They said Musk asked too late.

Meanwhile, Judge Gonzalez Rogers told Musk's damages expert Dr. C. Paul Wazzan — who had estimated OpenAI and Microsoft's wrongful gains at $78.8 billion to $135 billion — that his "analysis seems to be devoid of connection to the underlying facts," according to TechCrunch.

The Verdict

Musk lost. He filed late and the law doesn't care about your feelings or your billions.

But anyone declaring this a verdict on Altman's character or OpenAI's conduct is getting ahead of the evidence. The jury never went there.

A trillion-dollar AI company built on a nonprofit foundation is now cleared to go public — and the only man who tried to challenge it legally blew the deadline.