TEXAS — Elon Musk lost his lawsuit against OpenAI and its co-founder Sam Altman on Monday. Musk vowed to appeal the verdict.

Musk criticized the decision in a post on X, writing that it amounted to "a free license to loot charities if you can keep the looting quiet for a few years!" The ruling adds to a series of legal setbacks for Musk, the world's richest man, who is poised to become the first trillionaire given his stake in SpaceX, which is expected to be publicly listed in the near future.

In March, Musk lost a case brought by Twitter investors who alleged they were misled by his public statements during the takeover of the social media platform. That same month, a judge threw out his lawsuit against advertisers that decided to leave the platform. Late last year, he settled with former Twitter executives and thousands of former employees of the platform, now known as X.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission fined Musk $1.5 million for failing to disclose his initial accumulation of Twitter stock. In December 2024, a judge invalidated his multi-billion-dollar pay package for Tesla. In May, a judge reversed actions by Doge, the government cost-cutting department Musk helped create and lead, finding that cuts to some grants were unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.

Shubha Ghosh, a lawyer and law professor at Syracuse University, said the string of decisions demonstrates the limits of Musk's legal reach. "No one is invincible," Ghosh said. "In a lot of ways, he is just another businessperson asserting his rights."

"I don't think he's abusing the legal system. Whether he uses it effectively, I'm not sure," he said.

Dorothy Lund, a lawyer and law professor at Columbia Law School, said Musk is unlikely to retreat from the courts despite repeated losses. "I don't see him stopping," Lund said. "It seems like there is no one who has been able to put real consequences on him or his actions."