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In the battle of the giants of Silicon Valley, Elon Musk loses against Sam Altman for procedural reasons. In less than two hours of deliberations, a California jury unanimously rejected the world’s richest man’s claims against his rival and OpenAI because they were filed after the statute of limitations had expired. Pending the appeal requests that Musk intends to present (“The judge and jury did not rule on the merits of the case, but on a technicality”, he said on And it looms over the multi-billion dollar listings of SpaceX and OpenAI itself expected in the coming months.
For Altman’s startup, the victory represents an improvement in view of the initial public offering, on which Musk weighed like a boulder. For Musk and his xAI, which recently merged with SpaceX, the verdict is instead a heavy slap in the face, even if the billionaire can claim to have been defeated not on the merits but only for statutory reasons.
At the center of the dispute are Musk’s accusations against his enemy Altman who manipulated him and induced him to contribute millions to the launch of OpenAI to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity. A promise that later turned out to be false with Altman becoming the architect of the startup’s transformation into a for-profit enterprise. “I was a fool” to have contributed 38 million, Musk admitted during the trial, during which he asked for damages of 180 billion dollars and the removal of Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman from their roles. “They stole from a charity,” Musk attacked. Lawyers for the ChatGPT CEO rejected the accusations point by point, arguing that Musk knew about the plan to create a for-profit company and supported it.
The world’s richest man reportedly tried to take control of the venture and sued only after being rebuffed. Musk is “a show of hypocrisy”, Altman’s lawyers thundered. Musk sued OpenAI and Altman in 2024, describing his battle as a fight for the soul of artificial intelligence, which is “perhaps the greatest existential threat we face.” A concept repeated several times even in court. “It might increase prosperity, but it might also kill us all. We want to find ourselves in a Gene Roddenberry film like ‘Star Trek’ and not in a James Cameron film like ‘Terminator,'” he said from the witness stand, comparing AI training to raising children. “When you have a very intelligent child and he grows up, you can no longer control him but you can try to instill the right values in him. Honesty, integrity and attention to humanity,” he explained, predicting that AI “will probably be as intelligent as any human being as early as next year.” A prediction which agitates and which arrives while Mythos, the latest model of artificial intelligence born from Anthropic, agitates authorities around the world for its power and ability, in the wrong hands, to cause damage.