Author: Qiao Ba , Tencent Technology

Edited by Xu Qingyang

On May 18, U.S. time, a judge in the Oakland Federal Court in California ruled to dismiss all of Elon Musk's allegations against OpenAI and its executives.

After nearly three weeks of trial, including the exposure of hundreds of private text messages and emails and the appearances of several tech billionaires, the nine-person jury entered the deliberation room. Everyone thought it would be a long wait.

However, they returned in less than two hours.

The jury unanimously ruled that the statute of limitations for Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman had expired. Presiding Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers accepted the verdict immediately, dismissing all of Musk's claims.

While OpenAI's legal team hugged and patted each other on the back in celebration inside the courtroom, Musk's two lawyers walked out of the courtroom and said only two words to reporters: "Appeal."

Musk himself also posted on X, calling Rogers a "radical judge," accusing her of "using the jury as a fig leaf," and saying the verdict created "a free license to plunder charities."

The news of the ruling quickly went viral on social media, with sharply contrasting reactions.

Some commentators questioned the rationality of the procedure: if the case truly exceeded the statute of limitations, why did the judge allow it to proceed to trial in the first place? It seems completely illogical, as if it were a waste of everyone's time and money.

Some people regretted not seeing a substantive judgment, but they were equally puzzled, believing that it was rather hasty not to consider the statute of limitations before filing the lawsuit.

Musk's supporters sharply criticized the move, saying it was a radical judge who let Altman go free, betraying public trust by using "time limits" after he turned a nonprofit organization that was supposed to benefit humanity into a profit empire worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Thus, this lawsuit, which many media outlets have called "the biggest feud in the tech world," has temporarily come to an end.

01. The core accusations are ignored.

To understand why this lawsuit has attracted so much attention, we need to go back to 2015.

That year, Musk co-founded OpenAI with Altman, Greg Brockman, and a group of AI researchers. Registered as a non-profit organization, its mission was very clear: to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity, not driven by commercial interests. Musk testified in court that he donated approximately $38 million to OpenAI based on the understanding that it would develop AI "for the benefit of humanity," not to enrich anyone.

However, things did not go as planned in the end.

In 2018, Musk left the OpenAI board of directors in a power struggle with Altman. The following year, OpenAI established a for-profit subsidiary and began accepting investments from Microsoft. From 2019 to 2023, Microsoft invested over $13 billion in OpenAI. In late 2022, ChatGPT emerged, and OpenAI instantly became one of the world's hottest tech companies.

In 2024, Musk filed a lawsuit. His core claim was that Altman and Brockman "stole a charity," turning what was originally a nonprofit organization dedicated to the public good into a commercial machine pursuing huge profits. He asked the court to force OpenAI and Microsoft to hand over up to $134 billion in "ill-gotten gains," remove Altman and Brockman from their leadership positions, and reverse the company's 2025 restructuring plan that favored the growth of its for-profit divisions.

In his closing statement, Musk's lawyer, Steven Morrow, told the jury, "Five witnesses have testified under oath that Ultraman is a fraud." Morrow emphasized that Ultraman's integrity is directly related to the core of the case.

The lawsuit also involves Microsoft. Musk claims the software giant aided and abetted OpenAI's alleged breach of charitable trusts. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified that the company has spent over $100 billion on its partnership with OpenAI, aiming for a return of $92 billion. As of last October, Microsoft's stake in OpenAI was valued at $135 billion.

02. OpenAI's Counterattack

In response to Musk's accusations, OpenAI's legal team painted a completely different picture.

Their core argument is that Musk not only knew about OpenAI's plan to transform into a for-profit company long ago, but he also actively promoted it, provided he could gain control. OpenAI's lead counsel, William Savitt, referred to the lawsuit as a "sour grapes" case in his opening statement.

During the three-week trial, OpenAI's lawyers presented a wealth of evidence to the jury, including private text messages and emails, proving that Musk knew about and supported the potential for-profit transformation at least as early as 2017. The lawyers claimed that Musk had even proposed merging OpenAI into Tesla at the time and suggested that he should own 90% of the company.

From OpenAI's perspective, Musk left because he failed to gain control. His lawsuit stemmed from OpenAI's tremendous success after the launch of ChatGPT, while his own competing company, xAI, failed to catch up.

Following the ruling, Savitt's remarks to reporters became even more direct. He said Musk's lawsuit was an "afterthought fabrication with no connection to the facts" and a "hypocritical attempt to undermine a competitor."

OpenAI also emphasized that the nonprofit organization has not disappeared. The foundation still controls for-profit companies and now has over $200 billion in assets. OpenAI's lawyers argued that restructuring the business was the only way to succeed in the expensive competition with Google's DeepMind, and that Musk's donations back then were unrestricted.

On the issue of trust, Sarah Eddy, another lawyer for OpenAI, accused Musk and his legal team in her closing statement of resorting to “rhetoric and irrelevant false accusations.”

03. Jury Selection

Ultimately, the jury did not reach a verdict on the core of Musk's accusation—whether there was actually "stealing from charities."

They made a judgment on a more fundamental issue: the statute of limitations.

Under the law, the statute of limitations for claims of breach of charitable trusts is three years, and for unjust enrichment, it is two years. Musk filed the lawsuit in August 2024. OpenAI's lawyers testified that Musk was fully aware of the conduct he later alleged several years prior. The jury found Musk guilty of failing to file the lawsuit within the prescribed time limit.

"This is not a technical decision, but a substantive one," Savitt told reporters after the ruling. "It shows that you filed the lawsuit too late because you have been using them as weapons against a competitor that cannot compete in the market. So we are pleased with this outcome."

Syracuse University law professor Shubha Ghosh said that appealing such rulings can be difficult. “These rulings are rarely appealable because it’s usually a clear rule. The jury finds out he’s waited too long.”

Musk clearly disagrees with this interpretation. He posted on X: "Regarding the OpenAI case, the judge and jury never made a verdict on the facts of the case itself, but only on a calendar technical detail. Anyone who has followed this case closely has no doubt that Altman and Brockman did indeed profit by stealing from charities. The only question is when they did it!"

Musk's lawyer, Morrow, reserved the right for his client to appeal directly to the judge. However, Judge Rogers expressed clear skepticism, stating she was prepared to dismiss the appeal "on the spot." At the close of the trial, she stated, "There is substantial evidence to support the jury's verdict."

04. The Cost Behind the Testimony

Although OpenAI won the case, the three-week trial was not without its costs. A wealth of internal documents and witness testimonies were made public, revealing internal turmoil and some embarrassing details within the world's hottest AI company.

Most notably, the testimonies concerning Ultraman's integrity were noteworthy. Musk's lawyer, Morrow, reminded the jurors in his closing statement that several witnesses questioned Ultraman's frankness or even labeled him a "liar." More subtly, when Ultraman was asked during the trial whether he was entirely trustworthy, he himself did not give a definitive answer.

OpenAI President Brockman's personal diary was also exposed, with one entry reading: "Financially, what would get me to $1 billion?" In his testimony, Brockman revealed that his shares in OpenAI are now worth close to $30 billion.

While Altman does not directly own shares in OpenAI, he holds interests in other companies that do business with OpenAI, including a $1.7 billion stake in fusion energy company Helion Energy, a $633 million stake in payment processor Stripe, and approximately $25 million worth of shares in semiconductor company Cerebras Systems. Former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever confirmed that his equity stake is worth approximately $7 billion.

OpenAI didn't miss the opportunity to attack Musk either. Brockman, during his testimony, belittled Musk's understanding of AI technology: "Listen, he knows rockets, he knows electric cars, but he doesn't know AI." OpenAI's lawyers portrayed Musk as capricious and quick to anger when things didn't go his way.

The two sides also reviewed the incident in which Altman was briefly removed from his position as CEO in 2023, which Musk's side used as evidence that "even the OpenAI board did not trust him".

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives commented, "While Ultraman's personal image and leadership have been somewhat affected, the verdict is a huge victory for both Ultraman and OpenAI."

05. IPO Race

The timing of this ruling coincides with two key moments.

OpenAI is moving forward with a possible initial public offering (IPO) that could value the company at $1 trillion, making it one of the largest IPOs in history.

Over the past year, the company has successfully navigated a series of challenges: renegotiating its relationship with Microsoft, obtaining regulatory approval to transform into a for-profit enterprise, and dealing with the rise of competitor Anthropic. In late March of this year, OpenAI completed a $122 billion funding round at a valuation exceeding $850 billion, the largest funding round in Silicon Valley history. According to the company, annualized revenue from subscriptions, licenses, and advertising will exceed $20 billion by 2025.

Judge Rogers’ ruling clearly removes a significant concern regarding OpenAI’s IPO.

Meanwhile, on another track, Musk's SpaceX is also rushing to the public market. SpaceX secretly filed for an IPO in April, and its prospectus may be released this week. The company's valuation reached $1.25 trillion after merging with Musk's AI startup xAI in February. Musk is expected to begin meeting with investors soon to prepare for SpaceX's IPO.

The rivalry between these two men is extending from the courtroom into the capital markets.

06. What did this trial leave behind?

The judge's ruling concluded the main part of the three-week trial, but Musk still has cards to play.

Musk's lawsuit also includes antitrust allegations against OpenAI and Microsoft. Judge Rogers has chosen to divide the case into multiple phases, with the antitrust portion being the next phase. However, her statements in court have already given a signal: "Competition law protects competition, not any individual. And competition in this industry is fierce." This implies that the prospects for this part of the allegations are not optimistic.

The three-week trial truly left behind a divisive picture of Silicon Valley's AI boom. Hundreds of private messages, executive diaries, and internal documents were made public, revealing OpenAI's trajectory from a cash-strapped startup to a near-trillion-dollar company. Around this process, two voices emerged in Silicon Valley: one side argued that the amount of funding required to develop powerful AI was simply unsustainable for a non-profit structure; the other side argued that packaging public interest into a commercial shell was a betrayal of its founding mission.

OpenAI’s nonprofit foundation now has assets exceeding $200 billion and nominally controls the for-profit company, but critics argue that it has long since become an extension of the company and has lost its regulatory function.

Following the ruling, the two sides issued sharply contrasting statements. Musk wrote on X that the decision set a precedent for "plundering philanthropy" and would have an "incredibly destructive" impact on charitable giving in the United States. His lawyer, Toberoff, called it "a new recipe for Silicon Valley"—starting with a nonprofit organization, then expanding by creating for-profit entities to enrich executives and directors.

OpenAI's lawyer, Savitt, responded just as sharply: "A hypocrite's attempt to undermine a competitor's hypocrisy." Microsoft, on the other hand, stated succinctly that the facts and timeline have always been clear, and that its collaboration with OpenAI will continue.

As Toberov said, this war is not over yet. For those closely following this biggest feud in the tech world, the next step is to see if the judges on the appeals court will have a different opinion.

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