Elon Musk’s $150 billion lawsuit against OpenAI was dismissed Monday. 

If Musk’s goal was to force OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to confront being called a liar on a witness stand, he succeeded. 

But the jury ruled that Musk’s case did not meet the statute of limitations. The judge confirmed the jury’s decision and dismissed the case. 

Musk, who helped start OpenAI in 2015, filed suit in August 2024. The claims he brought against the company and cofounders Altman and Greg Brockman — including breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment — were argued over the course of a three-week trial in Oakland. Musk had hoped the suit would see OpenAI reclassified as a nonprofit.

Lawyers for Musk did not respond to a request for comment. According to reports from the courtroom, his team plans to appeal.

Musk has repeatedly accused Altman and the other defendants of “stealing a charity” — taking Musk’s initial donations to the nonprofit, then cutting him out when they converted OpenAI to a for-profit company. The company took on funding from Microsoft, another defendant, and others. 

In statements after her ruling, federal Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said there was substantial evidence that Musk knew or could have known enough about OpenAI to file his lawsuit prior to 2024. 

OpenAI’s lawyers argued that Musk was aware and at times supportive of the plan to convert the nonprofit and chose not to participate. They said Musk sued as an act of revenge motivated by jealousy after he founded a competing AI company, xAI. 

The highly publicized case at times devolved into a series of character attacks on some of the richest and most powerful people in the world. Altman was repeatedly accused of being untrustworthy, as Musk’s lawyers argued that he and Brockman lacked the connections and reputation to have made OpenAI a success on their own. Musk — who stopped coming to court after the first week, apparently choosing to travel to China with President Donald Trump instead — was made to seem erratic, testy, and vindictive. 

The trial saw witness testimony from other important players, including OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever and former board members Mira Murati and Shivon Zilis; the latter went on to work for Musk’s companies and is the mother to four of his children. The emails, text messages, and journal entries that became public during the trial shed light on the lives of the tech elite and the transformation of AI idealists into the next generation of tech titans.