Altman versus Musk: OpenAI’s CEO won the court battle but could lose the fund-raising war

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.We have all been in meetings that “could have been an email,” so why not have a jury trial that could have been an AI prompt?“Is Elon Musk able to sue OpenAI for breach of contract?” we might have asked an artificial intelligence (AI) model before the three-week circus at a federal court in downtown Oakland, California. “No,” should have been the AI model’s answer.

“He is too late.”That was the jury’s anticlimactic verdict on Musk’s effort to sue Sam Altman, OpenAI and Microsoft over transforming OpenAI from a non-profit into a for-profit concern—or “stealing a charity,” as Musk put it more than a dozen times while on the stand. The jury took about two hours to rule unanimously that the statute of limitations for Musk’s claims had expired.

The judge agreed, and that was that. Musk’s lawyers vowed an appeal, but didn’t specify what they will argue.At the start of the trial, I suggested that asking an Oakland jury to choose between Musk and Altman was like asking them to pick between a “slap in the face or a knee to the groin.” Shrewdly enough, the jurors opted to avoid both.

Yet, while they passed on the opportunity to deliver a verdict on Altman’s integrity in creating OpenAI, Wall Street still might. If there is one thing of any value to take from the trial, it is the ever-darkening cloud over Altman’s suitability as a custodian of one of the most important companies in the world.

Especially telling over the course of this trial was just how many of Altman’s earliest allies now seem to want little to do with him.Yes, Altman and OpenAI ‘won’ the case. Potential for appeal aside, the decision seems to have staved off the immediate threat that OpenAI in its current form would be