Jury rejects Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI founders

A jury has rejected Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI, its founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, and Microsoft. The verdict effectively ends a legal battle that was undermined by its late filing. The jury was asked to consider whether Musk should have known before August 5, 2021, that OpenAI was spending resources outside its mission or launching a for-profit affiliate. Ultimately, the jury’s decision confirmed that Musk’s case was a weak one, in part because he waited so long to file it, running up against the statute of limitations.

During the trial, court proceedings revealed that Musk had utilized OpenAI researchers for his own for-profit company, Tesla, in 2017. Greg Brockman, an OpenAI co-founder, testified that Musk asked him to bring a team of OpenAI researchers to Tesla’s headquarters to help with the autopilot team. Brockman stated, “It was pretty clear that was not something we could say no to.” The researchers helped Tesla’s team, with one researcher suggesting that finding 10,000 images of a tricky corner case would allow them to fix their software. However, another person familiar with the episode reported that Tesla did not reimburse OpenAI for the time and effort of its employees. This highlighted a tension in Musk’s actions, as he used resources from the non-profit research lab to benefit his for-profit enterprise.

Musk plans to appeal the verdict and has continued to attack the defendants and the presiding judge, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, whom he called a terrible activist Oakland judge. Musk’s lawsuit accused Altman and Brockman of a breach of charitable trust—defined as a legal claim regarding the misuse of non-profit funds—and unjust enrichment due to benefits from OpenAI’s for-profit arm. Musk asserted that the co-founders enriched themselves by stealing a charity, accusing Altman of a lack of credibility and alleging that he stole a non-profit. However, Dorothy Lund, a Columbia Law School professor and the co-host of the Beyond Unprecedented podcast, noted that it was a bit rich for Musk to be suing for breach of a charitable trust, when he appears to have been redirecting assets in a way that was inconsistent with that mission. While Musk’s donations were intended to fund scientists focused on securing the benefits of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), he instead had them work for free at his for-profit company.

Why it matters

The jury’s rejection of Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and its founders confirms the weakness of the case, which was largely undermined by the timing of the filing and revelations about Musk’s own use of OpenAI resources for his for-profit company, Tesla.