OAKLAND — A jury in Oakland, California, dismissed Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI on procedural grounds related to the statute of limitations. Musk had sued the company for more than $150 billion, claiming that its leadership converted the nonprofit lab into a for-profit company under false pretenses.

The lawsuit alleged that Sam Altman, other OpenAI executives, and Microsoft "stole a charity." Musk sought to unwind OpenAI's transformation into a for-profit company, demanded the disgorgement of $150 billion in damages to be paid to the original nonprofit, and called for the removal of Altman from OpenAI. Musk testified in court during the first week of the trial and plans to continue legal action against the company despite the dismissal.

Musk and Altman founded OpenAI together as a nonprofit in 2015. The organization's mission is "to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity." OpenAI was intended to counter Google's potential dominance of the technology. Musk pledged up to $1 billion to OpenAI and contributed about $38 million before departing the organization roughly two years after its founding, at which point he withdrew about $960 million.

In his valedictory e-mail, Musk wrote, "My probability assessment of OpenAI being relevant to DeepMind/Google without a dramatic change in execution and resources is 0%. Not 1%. I wish it were otherwise."

OpenAI subsequently opened a for-profit subsidiary and secured billions of dollars in funding from Microsoft and other investors. In October 2023, the company completed a restructuring and recapitalization process. The for-profit subsidiary is valued at close to a trillion dollars.

District-court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers presided over the case. "The reality is that people don't like him. Many people don't like him—but that doesn't mean that Americans nevertheless can't have integrity for the judicial process," Gonzalez Rogers said.