A nine-member advisory jury in Oakland unanimously found on May 18, 2026, that Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI Inc., Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and Microsoft Corporation was barred by the statute of limitations, concluding Musk had reason to know he was being misled before 2021 [1][2]. The jury deliberated fewer than two hours before returning the verdict [2]. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, sitting in the Northern District of California, adopted the advisory jury's findings and dismissed the case [1][3].
Musk filed the action alleging that OpenAI's leadership breached a charitable trust by converting the organization from a nonprofit into a for-profit enterprise, and that the defendants were unjustly enriched in the process [1][3]. The claims survived multiple rounds of motion practice before reaching trial, though the charitable-trust and unjust-enrichment theories ultimately did not reach the merits. The jury resolved the dispute entirely on the threshold limitations question, finding that Musk possessed sufficient knowledge of the alleged misconduct to trigger the limitations clock well before the period he argued should govern [2][3].
Because the jury found for the defendants on limitations grounds, the court did not reach the merits of the breach-of-charitable-trust claim or assess damages. Musk had sought an estimated $150 billion to $180 billion in restitution or disgorgement tied to OpenAI's valuation gains, a figure that would have ranked among the largest civil judgments ever sought in a United States federal court [1].
Musk publicly criticized the result as a procedural technicality and indicated he would appeal [1]. Defense counsel for OpenAI included William Savitt of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz, while Microsoft retained separate trial counsel [1][3]. The verdict removes a litigation cloud that had shadowed OpenAI's anticipated initial public offering, and it signals that courts will apply standard limitations doctrine to charitable-trust claims arising from the formation of AI ventures, even when the underlying conversion is contested on public-interest grounds [4].