Elon Musk, left, and Sam Altman. Elon Musk, left, and Sam Altman. How Sam Altman's victory over Elon Musk clears way for OpenAI's trillion-dollar ambitions OpenAI's plans now seem all but guaranteed, given that the world's richest man couldn't put a stop to them On Monday morning, a jury in Oakland, California, handed a resounding victory to Sam Altman and OpenAI in their long, bitter courtroom battle with Elon Musk. The federal jury found Altman, OpenAI and its president, Greg Brockman, not liable for Elon Musk's claims that they unjustly enriched themselves and broke a founding contract made with Musk when founding the startup. The unanimous verdict, delivered after less than two hours of deliberation, is a stark rebuke of Musk and his lawyer's claims that Altman "stole a charity" through his leadership of OpenAI.

The federal jury in Oakland, California, found Altman, OpenAI and its president, Greg Brockman, not liable for Elon Musk's claims that they unjustly enriched themselves and broke a founding contract made with Musk when founding the startup. The verdict, delivered after less than two hours of deliberation, is a stark rebuke of Musk and his lawyer's claims that Altman "stole a charity" through his leadership of OpenAI . It also provides the AI firm with a clear path ahead to pursue going public later this year at about a $1tn valuation . The jury's finding is a non-binding, advisory verdict that left Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers with ultimate power to issue her own ruling in the case. Gonzalez Rogers immediately said that she would agree with the jury's decision and dismissed Musk's claims.

A California jury has tossed out Elon Musk's high-profile lawsuit against OpenAI and its boss Sam Altman. In a unanimous verdict, the case was thrown out because Musk had filed his lawsuit after a statute of limitations to bring such claims had expired. Musk had accused Altman of breaching a non-profit contract by shifting the ChatGPT-maker to a for-profit company after Musk donated $38m (£28.5m). Musk had argued Altman deceived him by accepting his money and then reneging on OpenAI's original non-profit mission to develop artificial intelligence (AI) technology for the benefit of humanity. Jurors spent three weeks viewing internal correspondence and hearing testimony, and arrived at a verdict on Monday after deliberating for roughly two hours.

After three weeks of testimony and not much deliberation, a jury has ruled against Elon Musk, finding that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman were not liable in the case. The jury found that the statute of limitations had already passed when Musk sued the two executives. Musk filed his lawsuit in 2024, accusing them of stealing a charity following his departure from the AI lab in 2018. Though the jury in the case served only an advisory role, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers agreed with the jury's ruling. Musk's claims of breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment are dismissed as untimely, she said according to Though Musk could still appeal the ruling, Rogers told his lawyer she would dismiss an appeal on the spot.

The nine-member panel took only two hours to return a verdict in favor of OpenAI on Monday, which the judge quickly adopted as her own final decision. Elon Musk suffered the worst defeat possible in his legal battle against OpenAI as a federal jury and a judge ruled he waited too long to bring his claims against the AI startup and its top executives, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. The jury's decision was a nonbinding recommendation sent to US district judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, though she immediately accepted it on Monday as her own, making it final. The nine-member panel delivered the unanimous verdict in an Oakland, California courtroom after deliberating for under two hours. They found that statutes of limitations expired well before Musk filed his lawsuit in 2024.

Claim, counter-claim and tech's seedy side exposed: Five things we learned in the Musk-Altman trial It is the legal showdown that has pitted two of the biggest names in tech, Elon Musk and Sam Altman, against each other. At stake is the future of one of the world's most valuable start-ups, ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, along with the reputations of Altman - the company's boss - and Musk, the man he founded it with. The central claim the jury has now retired to consider is Musk's argument his former friend stole a charity, cheating him out of a fortune (albeit a tiny one, by Musk's standards) along the way - something Altman strongly rejects. But there's been much more to the trial than that. Over the past three weeks, myself and other reporters have been glued to our seats at the federal court in California as the evidence ranged from explosive text messages to revelations of free Teslas allegedly offered in exchange for power.

Musk v. Altman week 2: OpenAI fires back, and Shivon Zilis reveals that Musk tried to poach Sam Altman OpenAI president Greg Brockman said Elon Musk wanted the company to create a for-profit entity--and endured a public peek into his diary. OpenAI president Greg Brockman, foreground, exits the U.S. District Court in Oakland, California. In the second week of the landmark trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI, Musk's motivations for bringing the suit were under scrutiny. Last week, Musk took the stand, alleging that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman had deceived him into donating $38 million to the company. He claimed that they'd promised to maintain it as a nonprofit dedicated to developing AI for the benefit of humanity, only to later accept billions of dollars of investment from Microsoft and restructure the company to operate a for-profit subsidiary. This week, Brockman fired back with his side of the story, arguing that Musk had actually pushed for OpenAI to create a for-profit arm and fought a bitter battle to have "absolute control" over it.

Musk v. Altman week 1: Elon Musk says he was duped, warns AI could kill us all, and admits that xAI distills OpenAI's models Musk kept his cool, and OpenAI's lawyer bulldozed him with piercing questions about his motivations for suing the company. In the first week of the landmark trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI, Musk took the stand in a crisp black suit and tie and argued that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman had deceived him into bankrolling the company. Along the way, he warned that AI could destroy us all and sat through revelations that he had poached OpenAI employees for his own companies. He even confessed, to some audible gasps in the courtroom, that his own AI company, xAI, which makes the chatbot Grok, uses OpenAI's models to train its own. The federal courthouse in Oakland, California, was packed with armies of lawyers carrying boxes of exhibits, journalists typing away at their laptops, and a handful of concerned OpenAI employees. Outside, protesters lined the streets, carrying signs urging people to quit ChatGPT, boycott Tesla, or both.

The trial starts soon in New Mexico's case against Meta--and the company is pulling out all the stops to protect its reputation. As Meta heads to trial in the state of New Mexico for allegedly failing to protect minors from sexual exploitation, the company is making an aggressive push to have certain information excluded from the court proceedings. The company has petitioned the judge to exclude certain research studies and articles around social media and youth mental health; any mention of a recent high-profile case involving teen suicide and social media content; and any references to Meta's financial resources, the personal activities of employees, and Mark Zuckerberg's time as a student at Harvard University. Meta's requests to exclude information, known as motions in limine, are a standard part of pretrial proceedings, in which a party can ask a judge to determine in advance which evidence or arguments are permissible in court. This is to ensure the jury is presented with facts and not irrelevant or prejudicial information and that the defendant is granted a fair trial.

Adam Raine was just 16 when he started using ChatGPT for help with his homework. While his initial prompts to the AI chatbot were about subjects like geometry and chemistry – questions like: "What does it mean in geometry if it says Ry 1" – in just a matter of months he began asking about more personal topics. "Why is it that I have no happiness, I feel loneliness, perpetual boredom anxiety and loss yet I don't feel depression, I feel no emotion regarding sadness," he asked ChatGPT in the fall of 2024. Instead of urging Raine to seek mental health help, ChatGPT asked the teen whether he wanted to explore his feelings more, explaining the idea of emotional numbness to him. That was the start of a dark turn in Raine's conversations with the chatbot, according to a new lawsuit filed by his family against OpenAI and chief executive Sam Altman.