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The federal jury in San Francisco delivered a unanimous verdict in under two hours rejecting Elon Musk's accusations against OpenAI, citing the statute of limitations and clearing the path to a $300 billion IPO for Sam Altman's company.
On 18 May 2026, a unanimous federal jury sitting in Oakland dismissed in under two hours the lawsuit Elon Musk had filed against OpenAI. The verdict rests solely on a procedural ground: the statute of limitations had expired. The substantive allegations, which concerned a possible betrayal of the organisation's founding mission, were therefore never examined by the jury and remain without a judicial answer.
Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015, contributing 38 million dollars, before leaving the board in 2018 and filing his complaint in 2024. He announced an appeal before the Ninth Circuit Court, although Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers signalled that this path would be difficult. For OpenAI, the outcome lifts a threat hanging over its imminent stock-market listing.
The case takes on its meaning amid a rapid concentration of generative artificial intelligence around a small number of American players. OpenAI, having moved from a non-profit structure to a commercial entity valued at between 850 billion and 1,000 billion dollars, embodies that trajectory. The trial brought to light an unresolved tension between a hybrid governance model — a non-profit core capping a commercial activity — and the demands of capital markets. The procedural verdict did not settle this question.
The ruling also secures the partnership with Microsoft, whose investment exceeds 100 billion dollars. Musk's creation of xAI illustrates the competitive fragmentation of the sector. What remains disputed concerns the scope of the verdict: some read it as a mere technical defeat, others as a signal about the regulation of large AI platforms, at a time when several jurisdictions, including the European Union with its AI Act, are debating appropriate forms of oversight.
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