Elon Musk has said he will appeal after a US court dismissed his lawsuit against OpenAI, following a ruling in California that rejected his claims against the company and its senior leadership over allegations that it moved away from its original non-profit mission.
The decision, handed down after a three-week trial in Oakland and formally adopted by US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, found that Musk's case was filed too late to proceed.
The dispute, heard in May 2026, centres on Musk's argument that OpenAI drifted from its founding purpose after he co-founded the organisation and invested around £30 million ($38 million) in its early years.
He later accused the company of shifting towards a profit-driven structure in ways he says contradicted its original understanding.
Musk's defeat was not a full rejection of his allegations, but a procedural finding. A nine-person jury concluded that Musk filed the case too late under the statute of limitations, a conclusion later adopted by Judge Gonzalez Rogers, who dismissed the lawsuit in full.
Jurors reached their decision after around two hours of deliberation, suggesting a clear view that Musk should have acted earlier.
The court found he knew, or reasonably should have known, about OpenAI's shift towards a for-profit structure years before filing the lawsuit in 2024.
