Federal jury delivers verdict on Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI

May 18, 2026 - 19:29

A federal jury has delivered a verdict in the high-stakes lawsuit filed by Elon Musk against OpenAI, the company behind the ChatGPT chatbot. Musk had accused the artificial intelligence firm of abandoning its original nonprofit mission, arguing that its shift toward for-profit operations violated the principles it was founded on.

The case centered on claims that OpenAI, which Musk co-founded in 2015 before leaving the board in 2018, had strayed from its commitment to develop AI for the public good. Musk's legal team argued that the company's partnership with Microsoft and its move to monetize its technology through paid subscriptions represented a breach of its founding charter. OpenAI countered that its evolution was necessary to secure the massive funding required for advanced AI research and that it had never formally promised to remain a nonprofit indefinitely.

The jury's decision, reached after several days of deliberation, marks a significant moment in the ongoing debate over the direction of artificial intelligence development. Musk has been a vocal critic of OpenAI's trajectory, warning that profit-driven AI poses risks to safety and transparency. The verdict could set a precedent for how courts interpret the legal obligations of organizations that transition from nonprofit to for-profit status.

Neither Musk nor OpenAI representatives immediately commented on the outcome. The ruling is expected to have ripple effects across the tech industry, where similar tensions between idealism and commercial reality are increasingly common.