A jury rejects Musk's claim against OpenAI

An advisory jury found Musk's claims against Altman, Brockman and OpenAI, for breach of charitable trust and restitution for unjust enrichment, barred by the statute of limitations, and the judge adopted its verdict.

Musk argued that the founders had turned a charity into their own profit. The jury never reached the questions of liability: it answered only that both claims were time-barred. The trial sheet has it deliberating at 8:58 on the morning of 18 May and returning the verdict at 10:23. The jury was advisory; Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers adopted its verdict as her own findings and confirmed this in an order of 20 May. That evening Musk wrote on X that the judge and jury had "never actually ruled on the merits of the case, just on a calendar technicality" and promised an appeal to the Ninth Circuit, and his lawyers asked the court the next day to certify the decision for appeal. For the timeline that is the point: whether the ownership of a laboratory founded as a non-profit may lawfully be changed is still unanswered. The trial is over, but the case is not: other claims, antitrust among them, were left for a later phase and sent to mediation in July.