A California federal jury unanimously dismissed all claims in Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI, Sam Altman, and other defendants on May 19, 2026. The verdict was delivered in under two hours — an unusually fast deliberation for a case this size — after the jury found that the statute of limitations had expired on all counts.
What Musk was suing for
Musk filed a $150 billion lawsuit alleging that OpenAI and Altman had betrayed the organization's original nonprofit mission. Musk was one of OpenAI's founding donors and board members, leaving the board in 2018. His core claim was that OpenAI's 2019 transition to a "capped-profit" structure and its subsequent commercial partnership with Microsoft represented a breach of contract and fraud against the nonprofit's founding principles. The $150 billion figure represented alleged damages from OpenAI's rise in value since the allegedly improper pivot.
Why the jury dismissed it
The jury found that Musk's claims were time-barred — he had waited too long to sue after the events he was challenging. The statute of limitations argument meant the jury never evaluated the merits of whether OpenAI actually violated its founding mission. The verdict does not settle the underlying question of whether OpenAI's commercialization was proper — it simply rules that Musk cannot pursue those claims in court at this point.
What happens next
Musk announced immediately after the verdict that he will appeal. Separately, Musk's own AI company xAI continues to compete directly with OpenAI with its Grok model family. The lawsuit's dismissal removes a legal overhang that had been cited as a distraction for OpenAI's leadership and may accelerate the company's planned corporate restructuring to a for-profit public benefit corporation.