LOS ANGELES—After nearly three weeks of evidence in one of the most scrutinized legal battles of the century, nine jurors on May 18 took less than two hours to decide Elon Musk had waited too long to accuse his former partners in a nonprofit startup of betraying their founding mission to create artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity.
The Tesla CEO sued OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2024, alleging they “looted” the charity he funded and flipped it to a for-profit company by exclusively licensing their flagship technology, ChatGPT, to Microsoft.
The advisory jury’s unanimous ruling on a statute of limitations defense, which was quickly accepted by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, clears the way for OpenAI’s expected initial public offering later this year. The company is currently valued at $852 billion….