Federal jury says Elon Musk waited too long to sue OpenAI

OAKLAND, Calif. (CBS, KYMA) - There is a verdict in a high-profile lawsuit billionaire Elon Musk brought against OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.

A nine-person federal jury in Oakland, California unanimously found that Musk waited too long to file his lawsuit against OpenAI, missing the statute of limitations deadline.

Musk had accused the company's executives, including CEO Sam Altman, of straying from a shared vision for open a-I to help develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity.

Musk was a co-founder and early investor in the company, which launched in 2015, but left the company in 2018.

"Obviously, huge personalities who were testifying in this case. So much of it was coming down to credibility. And do you believe that there was really a enforceable contract that was made between musk and Altman? Do we really believe that there was breach of a charitable trust here that essentially OpenAI stole a charity's money? And all of that has fallen by the wayside because the jury focused in essentially on one question. And this is they're exactly right. This is the threshold question. Did you bring the case in time? And a unanimous jury said, 'No, you didn't.'"

Jessica Levinson, legal contributor, CBS News

The jury served in an advisory role listening to three weeks of testimony in the civil case, and the judge accepted the verdict as the court's own and dismissed Musk's claims.