A California jury unanimously found that Elon Musk waited too long to file a lawsuit against Sam Altman regarding how OpenAI was steered after their falling out. The jury’s advisory verdict led Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to dismiss the case, ending a three-week trial. The decision turned on timing under the statute of limitations rather than on the core allegations. Musk accused Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman of breaching a charitable trust by abandoning OpenAI’s founding mission and then profiting from decisions he said were disputed in court. OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit focused on advanced AI for humanity, later adding a for-profit arm in 2017 to raise money and attract researchers. Musk left the board in 2018 after disagreements over control.
"A jury in California took less than two hours to decide that Elon Musk waited too long to file a lawsuit against his one-time business partner Sam Altman over the direction he's steered the artificial intelligence company OpenAI since the two had a falling out nearly a decade ago. In a unanimous decision, the nine-member advisory jury said Musk was beyond the statute of limitations when he launched his case in 2024. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, agreed, tossing the case out."
"In determining that the suit was filed too late, the jury sidestepped questions at the heart of Musk's case accusing Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman of committing a "breach of charitable trust" by allegedly jettisoning OpenAI's founding mission, and then profiting from the decision claims they disputed in court. OpenAI was established in 2015 as a nonprofit aiming to create advanced AI for the benefit of humanity a mission born out of a shared concern among the founders about the potentially negative consequences of AI being controlled by any one person or for-profit company."
"But by 2017, the founders were convinced they needed to set up a for-profit arm of OpenAI to raise money and attract researchers in order to be competitive. Musk wanted control, but the others disagreed, and he left the board in 2018. In court, he claimed that Altman "stole a charity" by creating a for-profit entity that became, in his words, "."
""I've always said I would accept the jury's verdict," Gonzalez Rogers said after issuing her decision. "I think there's a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury's finding." The decision brings a swift end to a three-week trial that laid bare the fears and ambitions that led two of Silicon Valley's biggest personalities to team up 11 years ago to launch OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and then to part ways after a dispute over how to run it."
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