Elon Musk sued OpenAI and lost. But the core question of the case remains unanswered
Elon Musk sued OpenAI and lost. But the core question of the case remains unanswered
Publish Date: 2026-05-19 02:34:00
Source Domain: theconversation.com
On Monday, a nine-member federal jury in Oakland, California took less than two hours to dismiss Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and its chief executive Sam Altman.
Crucially, the jury did not rule on the core claims of the case. These included whether OpenAI, the company behind the popular artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT, strayed from its founding mission and whether Altman and OpenAI’s co-founder Greg Brockman enriched themselves at the expense of a charitable purpose.
It decided only that Musk had waited too long to sue in relation to his core claims about breaches of a founding contract or breach of charitable trust.
A victory for Musk could have neutered OpenAI, which in turn would have probably sent shockwaves through the entire AI sector given the company’s dominant position developing the technology.
Now, however, OpenAI has a clear path to take its next big step in the AI race, even though the key question at the core of the case remains unanswered: is OpenAI a nonprofit dedicated to humanity or a corporation dedicated to its shareholders?
How it all started
OpenAI was founded in December 2015 as a nonprofit entity – an AI research lab.
Musk and a group of prominent entrepreneurs pledged US$1 billion to develop AI for the benefit of humanity, free of commercial pressure. Alongside Musk, the founding group included Altman, Brockman and computer scientist Ilya Sutskever.
The organisation’s charter committed to two key principles. First, developing artificial general intelligence safely and for the benefit of all of humanity.
Second, developing the technology openly, meaning it would be open source. This would allow others to use their underlying models, code, and research freely.
This was the deal Musk says he signed up for. And OpenAI claims it continues to honour this deal even today, despite more than US$20 billion in revenue in 2025.
Since 2015, a lot has happened. And understanding these events is key…
