OAKLAND, Calif. — Jurors on Monday handed Elon Musk a loss in the landmark trial over the future of OpenAI — finding that the world’s richest person had brought his case too late.
The unanimous verdict, which the nine-member, federal jury reached less than two hours after it began deliberations on Monday, caps three weeks of proceedings that captivated Silicon Valley and beyond and featured some of the biggest names in tech.
Along with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the company’s president Greg Brockman and Musk, the trial featured testimony from Musk advisor and romantic partner Shivon Zillis, OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
The verdict avoids a potential shakeup of the AI landscape at a critical moment. Musk is planning a public share offering for SpaceX, which merged with his own AI startup. OpenAI, meanwhile, is also racing toward an IPO.
Musk — who donated $38 million to OpenAI years before launching his own high-profile artificial intelligence project, xAI — sought about $150 billion in damages and a court order unwinding OpenAI’s for-profit status.
Musk’s lawsuit, which alleges that Brockman, Altman and OpenAI violated the company’s charitable mission when it launched a for-profit entity and raised billions to help it grow into the juggernaut it is today. The suit also accused Microsoft of aiding and abetting the scheme by pumping some $13 billion into OpenAI’s for-profit arm.
In his testimony during the trial’s first week, Musk said “This lawsuit is very simple: It is not OK to steal a charity.” Musk repeated the versions of the phrase throughout his time on the witness stand.
Musk also at one point texted Altman after news of one of Microsoft’s investments into OpenAI became public, calling the agreement a “bait and switch.”
Altman and the other defendants said throughout the trial that Musk was well aware of and even supported OpenAI’s for-profit endeavors. Altman’s lawyers provided evidence that appeared to show Musk agreeing that an entity that could raise traditional venture style funding in exchange for equity was the only way they could pay for the massive amounts of computing power to compete with the likes of Google.
OpenAI President Greg Brockman detailed a 2017 meeting in a Musk mansion where him and other OpenAI top brass including Altman, Murati and Zilis showed up and it was “clear there was a party there the night before,” littered with “confetti and cups.”
Whiskey was served, Brockman testified, and the OpenAI group discussed a for-profit entity and the conversation was “celebratory.”
An attorney who has represented large tech companies but is not involved in the OpenAI suit said he believed Musk’s case grew stronger throughout the trial. He specifically cited Altman’s time on the stand getting hammered by Musk’s lawyer about whether he was trustworthy.
“Musk has more of a case here than previously thought,” said the expert, who attended most of the proceedings. “The first 15 minutes of Altman’s cross-examination were devastating.”
Altman’s trustworthiness was central to Musk’s case. Musk’s legal team leaned heavily on testimony from key OpenAI figures – including former board members Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner as well as former head of technology Mira Murati – who said Altman didn’t always tell the truth.
“My concern was about Sam saying one thing to one person and completely the opposite to another person,” Murati said in taped testimony played in a packed Oakland, Calif., federal courtroom.
Musk lawyer Steven Molo sought to hammer the point home when addressing the jurors in his closing arguments last week: “Imagine that you’re on a hike, and you come upon one of those wooden bridges that you see on a trail and it’s over a gorge,” Molo said inside the federal courtroom.
“There’s a river that’s 100 feet below and it looks a little scary, but a woman standing by the entry to the bridge says, ‘Don’t worry, the bridge is built on Sam Altman’s version of the truth.’
“Would you walk across that bridge? I don’t think many people would,” the lawyer added.
Altman addressed Musk’s “steal a charity” line in his testimony, last week, “It feels difficult to even wrap my head around that framing.”
