San Jose, California, 19 May 2026 (dpa/MIA) – Elon Musk has lost his high-profile legal battle against the leadership of ChatGPT developer OpenAI, after a federal jury found on Monday that he filed the lawsuit after the statute of limitations had expired.

US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said jurors concluded Musk had brought the case too late under California law.

Musk, a founder and financial backer of OpenAI, had sought to force chief Sam Altman and senior executive Greg Brockman from their positions and to change the company’s structure. The two men were once close collaborators with Musk but have since become business rivals.

His lawyer Marc Toberoff said the decision would be appealed. 

At the heart of the fight is OpenAI’s hybrid structure, which consists of a non-profit core and a for-profit arm that is formally subordinate to it. 

In his lawsuit filed in August 2024, Musk argued he had been misled by Altman and Brockman, saying he had donated money specifically to support the development of artificial intelligence within a non-profit framework.

Musk and his lawyers contended that most of the company’s value now resides in the for-profit entity, benefiting Altman, Brockman and major investor Microsoft. 

Musk argued he had been betrayed by his former business partners, saying a “charity” he helped create for the public good had been turned into a profit-seeking firm.

OpenAI has rejected those allegations, maintaining that its non-profit arm still retains ultimate control. It also argued that without the addition of a for-profit entity, it would not have been possible to secure the billions of dollars in investment needed to develop advanced AI systems.

The timing of Musk’s lawsuit proved decisive. He had fully ended his involvement with OpenAI in 2020 and failed to convince the jury that he only much later became suspicious of his former associates' conduct.
Under California law, such claims are subject to a three-year statute of limitations.

A victory for Musk could have profoundly disrupted OpenAI’s financing and reshaped competition in the fast-growing AI industry. With around 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is a leading player, while Musk’s rival software Grok has a smaller user base.

Musk was instrumental in the creation of OpenAI, which was founded in 2015 as a non-profit artificial intelligence research lab. He contributed a total of about $38 million, providing roughly $25 million in quarterly funding until mid-2017 and covering rent costs of more than $12 million through 2020. He also supplied vehicles from his electric car company Tesla for senior staff.

MIA file photo