JUST IN: Elon Musk waited too long to sue OpenAI, jury finds on Day 14 of trial The unanimous verdict from the 9-person jury in federal court in Oakland hinged on one issue: timing. The jury found that Elon Musk waited too long to bring his lawsuit against OpenAI, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. The statute of limitations on his core claims had already run out by the time he sued in August 2024. What the jury actually decided: - Musk's breach of charitable trust claim was barred by the statute of limitations - Musk's unjust enrichment claim was barred by the statute of limitations Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers had instructed the jury that California law gives a plaintiff three years to bring a breach of charitable trust claim once they knew or should have known of the breach, and two years to bring an unjust enrichment claim. The cutoff dates were August 5, 2021 for the breach of charitable trust claim and August 5, 2022 for unjust enrichment. In her closing argument, OpenAI defense counsel Sarah Eddy walked the jury through years of Musk's own emails, tweets and public statements showing he was on notice of OpenAI's for-profit pivot well before those cutoff dates. Eddy pointed to a September 2020 Musk tweet calling OpenAI "captured by Microsoft" and arguing the company had become the opposite of its founding open-source mission. Eddy also argued that Shivon Zilis, Musk's OpenAI board observer and now a Neuralink executive, had kept Musk updated on OpenAI's restructuring discussions for years. Zilis was on OpenAI's 2021 special committee. The jury agreed. Musk knew, or should have known, about the alleged breach years before he filed suit. The merits of Musk's underlying claims were never decided. The case was lost on timing alone. (Image of the Jury is from Google)