A unanimous jury needed less than two hours to dismiss the case on a technicality, clearing the way for what could be the largest tech IPO in history
So that's that. Three weeks of testimony, six billionaires on the stand, hundreds of pages of private emails and a courtroom circus complete with street protesters, and the whole thing came down to a clock.
A nine-member federal jury in Oakland ruled unanimously on Monday that Elon Musk waited too long to sue Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and OpenAI. Every claim was barred by the statute of limitations. The jury needed less than two hours.
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers endorsed the finding within minutes, saying she had been prepared to dismiss the case herself. Musk's lead counsel Marc Toberoff offered a one-word response: "Appeal."
A trial that answered the wrong question
The case produced 11 days of testimony, Brockman's personal diaries, texts between Musk and Mark Zuckerberg about buying OpenAI together, and the revelation that Shivon Zilis had been romantically connected to Musk far longer than previously known. It was riveting stuff. It was also irrelevant.
The jury found that Musk knew about OpenAI's shift to a for-profit structure as far back as 2021. He had three years to file. He filed in 2024. Too late.
OpenAI's defence was brutal in its simplicity: if you saw the problem years ago, why wait to sue until you were running a competing AI company? Musk's answer on the stand, that he believed reassurances from Altman and only acted when Microsoft's $10 billion investment made the betrayal undeniable, did not land. During the recess that followed the verdict, lawyers for OpenAI and Microsoft exchanged hugs.
IPO path clears
Musk had sought up to $134 billion in damages, Altman's removal from the board and the unwinding of OpenAI's 2025 restructuring. All of that is now off the table, pending appeal.
The timing is convenient. OpenAI raised $122 billion in March at a valuation above $850 billion. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley are in discussions to advise on a listing, with the company targeting a regulatory filing in the second half of this year. A Q4 2026 debut remains the stated ambition, though CFO Sarah Friar has privately suggested 2027 might be more realistic.
There are good reasons for caution. PitchBook published an analysis this month arguing that OpenAI's $1.15 trillion in long-term infrastructure commitments and projected annual cash burn of $57 billion by 2027 make the Q4 timeline look stretched. The company does not expect to reach profitability until 2030. Revenue has hit $25 billion on an annualised basis, which sounds impressive until you set it against the spending.
What the courtroom couldn't settle
The core allegation, that OpenAI violated its founding charitable mission when it built a for-profit arm and took billions from Microsoft, never received a legal answer. The statute of limitations defence meant the jury could skip it entirely.
That question is not going away. OpenAI's conversion from nonprofit to public benefit corporation is a live governance issue that any IPO prospectus will need to address head-on. The trial dumped a trove of internal communications into the public record that paint a messy picture of how the company's leadership navigated the gap between mission and money.
Musk filed too late. That is now a matter of law. Whether the company he helped found turned too hard from its origins is a question the market, not the courts, will get to price in.