Elon Musk has spectacularly lost his lawsuit against OpenAI in what was described as “the worst defeat possible,” a “crushing defeat”, and a “major blow to Musk’s credibility.”
Musk sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, for $150 billion, claiming it had illegally morphed from being a not-for-profit to a highly lucrative start-up expected to list sometime this year for an expected $1 trillion.
He made a claim in court that Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman were guilty of “stealing a charity”.
In the end, the nine-person jury only took two hours to come back with a verdict that Musk had let too much time lapse before filing his complaint, and therefore, the relevant statute of limitations had passed.
Musk tweeted later that “the judge & jury never actually ruled on the merits of the case, just on a calendar technicality.”
Unfortunately for him, that is the law.
After the jurors announced their finding, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said: “There’s a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury’s finding, which is why I was prepared to dismiss on the spot.”
Musk’s lawyers immediately gave a one-word reply: “appeal”.
OpenAI lawyer William Savitt called the lawsuit “sour grapes” as the three-week-long trial opened, while the ChatGPT-maker has argued that Musk was upset he lost control of the startup he helped found in 2015 and invested $38 million in. Musk left the board in 2018, and OpenAI formed its for-profit business the following year. Microsoft then invested $13 billion over the next four years.
OpenAI’s Savitt had a biting remark about Tesla in his closing argument: “Mr Musk may have the Midas touch in some areas, but not in AI.”
