A federal jury in Oakland unanimously dismissed Elon Musk\u2019s $150 Billion suit against OpenAI. The jury ruled that Musk waited too long to sue, finding his claims fell outside the three-year statute of limitations. The court never ruled on whether OpenAI actually broke its founding promise. That question remains legally unanswered.The verdict clears a significant obstacle for OpenAI\u2019s conversion to a for-profit entity and its path toward a public market debut\u200a\u2014\u200acurrently targeting the end of 2026 at an $852 billion valuation. OpenAI still has multiple legal battles\u00a0ahead.Musk has vowed to appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. If the court takes the case, the substantive question could finally get a hearing on the merits. The legal fight has another\u00a0chapter.Musk and Altman are two of the most influential figures in the AI-crypto space. Musk\u2019s history with DOGE shows that his actions, wins, and losses affect its market price. Altman runs a live crypto project in World (formerly Worldcoin) with a trading token. What happens to their resources and momentum in this fight has indirect but real effects on the crypto\u00a0space.<\/p>\n
On May 18, a federal jury in California unanimously dismissed Elon Musk\u2019s lawsuit against OpenAI. The advisory jury, which decided in two hours, found that Elon Musk\u2019s suit against Sam Altman\u2019s OpenAI, which he filed in February 2024, was filed outside the three-year statute of limitations. The presiding district court judge, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, adopted the jury\u2019s\u00a0verdict.<\/p>\n
Elon Musk and his legal team intend to file an\u00a0appeal.<\/p>\n
In 2015, Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI alongside Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and others. It was created as a nonprofit organisation. By 2018, due to alleged power disputes<\/a>, Elon Musk had left the\u00a0company.<\/p>\n In 2019, OpenAI announced that it would be moving from nonprofit to \u2018capped-profit<\/a>\u2018 as a way to raise capital to attract and retain researchers. By late 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT and, within a few months, had an active monthly user base of over 100\u00a0million.<\/a><\/p>\n During the trial, OpenAI<\/a> argued that by Summer 2017, Elon Musk and the other co-founders agreed that the company needed to change direction if it wanted to make any progress with its mission. It also claims that by the fall of 2017, Elon demanded total control and the CEO role at the proposed \u2018for-profit\u2019 OpenAI, the origin of the power struggle. By February 2018, Elon resigned as co-chair of\u00a0OpenAI.<\/p>\n OpenAI\u2019s move from nonprofit to a capped-profit structure in 2019, and its subsequent partnership with Microsoft that same year, were public knowledge. As early as 2020, Elon Musk began publicly disagreeing with OpenAI\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n OpenAI\u2019s lawyers argued, and the jury agreed, that Elon knew or should have reasonably known about the alleged breach years before he filed in\u00a02024.<\/p>\n Musk, who had donated around $3<\/a>8 million to OpenAI in its early days, claimed that Sam Altman and the co-defendants betrayed OpenAI\u2019s nonprofit founding mission, which was seeking the damages, which his legal team argued were worth $150 billion, should be paid to the nonprofit arm of OpenAI, and the removal of Sam Altman from the company\u2019s board.<\/p>\n Whatever promise was or wasn\u2019t made, or broken, the jury\u2019s dismissal and the grounds for the dismissal were that, legally, it was too late to argue it; the three-year statute-of-limitations clock had run\u00a0out.<\/p>\n This verdict clears some legal ground for OpenAI to move forward with its restructuring, but its path is not yet clear. This is just one of the many chapters in the legal battle between OpenAI and Elon Musk. OpenAI has an open countersuit<\/a> against Elon Musk, which it filed in April 2025, where it accuses Elon of using lawsuits in bad faith to stifle competition.<\/p>\n OpenAI, which is approaching a pre-funding valuation of $730 billion<\/a> and a post-money valuation of $852 billion<\/a>, aims to launch its IPO before the end of the year. A verdict in their favour, one that does not require them to remit $150 billion to their more charitable arm, helps their timeline.<\/p>\n OpenAI initially proposed a restructuring that would remove its nonprofit entity from overseeing the activities of its for-profit arm. Investigations and inquiries from the California and Delaware AG offices prompted OpenAI to instead create a separate public benefit corporation, PBC, within its nonprofit corporation, NFP.<\/p>\n This restructuring will help it compete with other tech giants like Google and Apple by removing its strict fundraising caps and paving the way for its planned IPO\u00a0launch.<\/p>\n Elon Musk and Sam Altman are both prominent figures in the AI space, with Elon\u2019s xAI serving as a direct competition for OpenAI. But the influence of these men spans beyond the AI\u00a0space.<\/p>\n Elon Musk, for one, has been the single most market-moving voice for Dogecoin, a token h,e via the X platfor,m has repeatedly flirted with integrating for payments over the years via the X platform. A statement, a tweet, a win, or a loss in court could potentially affect the price of\u00a0DOGE.<\/p>\n In March 2026, when Elon confirmed that X Money, a built-in digital wallet for the X platform, would enter the public access phase in April, the price of DOGE rallied by over 8%<\/a> on speculation about the integration alone, indicating the reflexive attention the crypto market pays to his\u00a0moves.<\/p>\n OpenAI is not the only creation in Sam Altman\u2019s portfolio. He also co-founded Tools for Humanity, the company behind World, which was formerly known as WorldCoin. TFH is currently developing tech at the intersection of human digital identity and financial access.<\/p>\n In 2025, influenced by his work in AI, Sam Altman and TFH developed the Orb. The Orb, according to Altman, will be a way for \u201cidentifying and authenticating humans in the age of AGI.\u201d At its launch, users received Worldcoin in their digital\u00a0wallet.<\/p>\n Afterwards, the device scans your iris and sends you a 12,800-digit code unique to you, known as your iris code. The Orb is considered a potential method for verifying identity on the blockchain.<\/p>\n Neither man is a passive observer in the crypto space. Investors in crypto and web3 are often people interested in AI. The outcome of a legal battle between the two men, one seeking to control the most valuable AI company, has potential downstream effects on resources, project momentum, and, arguably most importantly, narrative, all of which shape crypto market\u00a0prices.<\/p>\n Originally published at <\/em>https:\/\/cryptoafrica.news<\/em><\/a> on May 19,\u00a02026.<\/em><\/p>\n Why Elon Musk\u2019s $150B OpenAI Lawsuit Was Dismissed<\/a> was originally published in Coinmonks<\/a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A federal jury in Oakland unanimously dismissed Elon Musk\u2019s $150 Billion suit against OpenAI. The jury ruled that Musk waited too long to sue, finding his claims fell outside the three-year statute of limitations. The court never ruled on whether OpenAI actually broke its founding promise. That question remains legally unanswered.The verdict clears a significant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":168036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168035"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=168035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/168036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=168035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=168035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=168035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What This Means For OpenAI\u2019s Restructuring<\/h3>\n
The Crypto Angle: Why This Matters Beyond Headlines<\/h3>\n