{"id":591064,"date":"2026-05-18T18:55:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T18:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/591064\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T18:55:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T18:55:08","slug":"jury-tosses-elon-musks-lawsuit-against-openai-and-its-boss-sam-altman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/591064\/","title":{"rendered":"Jury tosses Elon Musk&#8217;s lawsuit against OpenAI and its boss Sam Altman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jurors spent three weeks viewing internal correspondence and hearing testimony, and arrived at a verdict on Monday after deliberating for roughly two hours.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Those witnesses included Musk and Altman themselves, plus Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, which Musk had accused of helping in the scheme.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">On the trial&#8217;s first day, Musk took the stand wearing a dark suit and tie and was asked by one of his lawyers what the legal action was about.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s actually very simple,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s not OK to steal a charity&#8230; If it&#8217;s okay to loot a charity, the entire foundation of charitable giving will be destroyed.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But Altman told the jury during his own testimony that Musk not only backed the idea of OpenAI becoming a for-profit business &#8211; he wanted control of it for the long-run.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;A particularly hair-raising moment was when my co-founders asked, &#8216;If you have control, what happens when you die?&#8217; He said something like, &#8216;maybe it should pass to my children.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Musk&#8217;s other claims against Microsoft were dismissed as a matter of law given the jury&#8217;s findings on the two claims against OpenAI.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The pair started OpenAI in 2015, but Musk left in 2018 after his co-founders denied him control.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Standing outside the court Sam Singer, a spokesman for OpenAI, called the verdict &#8220;tremendous victory&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;This was nothing but an effort by Mr Musk to slow down a competitor,&#8221; he said, adding that it was a victory &#8220;for the justice system as well&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lawyer William Savitt, who represented OpenAI during the trial, said Musk&#8217;s lawsuit &#8220;bears no relationship with reality&#8221; and that the jury decided that Musk was lying during his testimony about the company&#8217;s origins.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We&#8217;re pleased that the jury reached the right result, and reached it quickly,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Savitt also said that OpenAI will continue to focus on its mission to develop &#8220;safe AI for the benefit of all humanity&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jurors spent three weeks viewing internal correspondence and hearing testimony, and arrived at a verdict on Monday after&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-591064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}