Author | Hualin Wuwang

Edited by Jingyu

In the classic mob film The Godfather, there is a line that has endured through the years: "It's not personal; it's just business."

But reality is often more complicated. When business and personal grievances become intertwined, and when one person is both a former co-founder and today’s fiercest competitor, it’s hard to tell whether that lawsuit is truly a legal document—or simply a long-delayed breakup letter.

Currently, the most high-profile litigation battle in Silicon Valley and across the entire United States is the ongoing court battle between Musk and Altman.

Now, after years of this ongoing feud, the first phase has reached a conclusion.

On May 18, 2026, at the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, nine jurors reached a verdict in less than two hours—Elon Musk lost.

After six years of dispute, a verdict has been reached.

The jury's verdict was not complicated, even somewhat technical.

The court did not directly address Musk’s most central allegation—that OpenAI betrayed its original charitable mission when it spun off its profit-making operations from its nonprofit parent and brought in commercial investors like Microsoft. The jury sidestepped this “question of conscience” and dismissed all claims solely on the grounds of statute of limitations.

California law requires such claims to be filed within three years of the relevant event. OpenAI’s investment from Microsoft and its gradual transition toward commercialization were publicly known as early as 2019. Musk did not file suit until 2024, and the jury determined that this exceeded the statutory deadline.

9 votes to 0 votes. Unanimously approved.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers stated after the trial that there was substantial evidence supporting the jury’s verdict and directly declared that she was ready to “dismiss on the spot” any motion for appeal that Musk might file. Her wording was unusually direct.

William Savitt, OpenAI’s chief counsel, post-trial characterization directly undermined the core of Musk’s narrative—“This is not a technical decision, but a substantive one. You waited too long to raise these claims, and the reason you did so is because you (Musk) held onto these claims as a weapon to use when you couldn’t compete in the market.”

This statement is very strong. Its underlying implication is that Musk is not the plaintiff, but rather a business rival using the judicial system as a weapon.

02 Lawsuit or feud?

To understand the true logic behind this lawsuit, we must go back to 2015.

That year, Musk, Altman, Greg Brockman, and others co-founded OpenAI, explicitly positioning it as a nonprofit organization with the mission of "developing safe artificial intelligence for the benefit of all humanity." Musk provided substantial funding in the early stages and was deeply involved in discussions about the company’s direction.

In 2018, he left the board citing a conflict of interest with Tesla's business.

What happened afterward is well known to most people. In 2019, OpenAI brought in Microsoft’s investment and gradually established a hybrid “limited profit” structure; ChatGPT emerged unexpectedly, and its valuation soared. Meanwhile, Musk founded his own AI company, xAI, in 2023, launched the Grok model, and directly competed with OpenAI.

In 2024, the complaint was formally filed. Musk accused Altman and Brockman of violating their original charitable commitment by commercializing the company and amassing personal fortunes—he described it as “stealing from a charity.”

This narrative carries a certain moral appeal, but the timeline gives it away.

OpenAI’s key decisions regarding commercialization occurred between 2019 and 2021, and were conducted openly and transparently, with extensive coverage by tech media. Musk was not unaware—he simply chose to reveal this information at the most critical window just before the IPO, after his competitor had already grown significantly.

Elon Musk’s attorney, Marc Toberoff, maintained his moral stance after the hearing—“This is a statement against OpenAI’s abuse of a charitable organization; without Musk, they would have gotten away with it.” However, they also announced plans to appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, making it clear that this battle is far from over.

03 Is the bad news for OpenAI fully priced in?

From OpenAI’s perspective, the significance of this ruling extends far beyond the law itself.

Wall Street analysts have provided the most straightforward interpretation. Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, noted that the greatest potential threat from this lawsuit lies in its possibility of forcing OpenAI into a major structural overhaul—if the court determines that its commercialization efforts violate charitable trust obligations, the entire corporate structure could face disruptive change.

The worst-case scenario has now been largely ruled out, which is a major positive for OpenAI’s IPO.

A legal sword of Damocles hanging overhead for six years was finally lowered within two hours.

Meanwhile, OpenAI’s own commercial momentum is at its strongest point in history. Over the past two weeks, the company has released a series of significant updates: the newly launched GPT-5.5 Instant is now the default model for ChatGPT, reducing hallucination rates by over 50% in high-risk scenarios; three real-time audio models tailored for enterprise use have been launched simultaneously, including GPT-Realtime-Translate, which supports real-time translation in over 70 languages; and the Codex coding assistant is now available on mobile, enabling developers to review code and approve commands from anywhere.

Meanwhile, in a new funding round completed approximately two weeks ago, OpenAI raised $12.2 billion at an $852 billion valuation, led jointly by Amazon, NVIDIA, SoftBank, and Microsoft. According to the latest data, the company’s monthly revenue has reached approximately $2 billion, with over 900 million weekly active users.

At this stage, any legal risks that could lead to corporate restructuring would be the most dangerous variable in the IPO process; the ruling has cleared this obstacle.

Microsoft’s statement is also noteworthy—“The facts and timeline of this case have always been clear. We welcome the jury’s decision to dismiss these claims, and we remain committed to our collaboration with OpenAI.” As OpenAI’s largest external partner, Microsoft’s wording is calm and confident.

04 Questions No One Answered

It should be noted that the outcome of the ruling should not be overly interpreted as a moral acquittal.

The jury dismissed the case on the grounds of statute of limitations, not because "OpenAI did not betray its mission."

The court never addressed the core question throughout: Where did the founding spirit go of a nonprofit organization established under the banner of "benefiting all humanity," after it became a commercial giant valued in the hundreds of billions?

This issue will not disappear just because a lawsuit has ended.

In fact, as OpenAI’s IPO window approaches, the company is quietly restructuring to clarify the relationship between its nonprofit and for-profit entities. This is not a concession to Musk, but rather a structural imperative that the entire AI industry must confront in its commercialization journey.

The tension between technological idealism and commercial realism is Silicon Valley’s enduring underlying contradiction.

From Google’s early “Don’t be evil,” to Facebook’s “Connect the world,” and then OpenAI’s “For all humanity,” these lofty founding narratives have all undergone varying degrees of distortion under the gravity of capital. Musk’s anger, regardless of its motivation, touches upon a genuine anxiety—when AI, a technology capable of reshaping civilization, is placed inside a commercial company preparing for an IPO, what should we truly believe in?

The court cannot provide an answer to this question.

Musk announced an appeal; Altman won today, but the deeper debate over who AI should belong to and who should control it has just entered a new phase.